Laura Resnick Samotin is chief of staff to the dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Policy (SIPA). She also serves as SIPA’s Director of Strategic Partnerships and an adjunct assistant professor of political science at Columbia University. She is a non-resident senior fellow with the Stimson Center and a non-resident senior fellow at the Schwarzenegger Institute at the University of Southern California.

She obtained a PhD in political science at Columbia University, where her research focused on the non-material determinants of military effectiveness. Her book project examines how public opinion affects the civil-military bargaining space, and subsequently contributes to disintegrated military strategy and reduced military effectiveness. In addition to her work on military effectiveness, she conducts research on political psychology, specifically on bias in decision- making processes; on grand strategy; and on military technological innovation.

Dr. Resnick Samotin was a Cordier Fellow in SIPA from 2016-2021. She was awarded a pre- doctoral fellowship at the Schwarzenegger Institute at the University of Southern California in Fall 2018 and a Hans Morgenthau pre-doctoral fellowship at the University of Notre Dame in Spring 2020. In 2022, she was the post-doctoral fellow in national security and intelligence at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University. Her work has been funded by the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library’s Scowcroft O’Donnell Grant and a generous Charles Koch Foundation grant for the study of grand strategy.

Before starting her Ph.D., she was a researcher at The Good Judgement Project at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. and M.Phil. from Columbia University.