Todd C. Helmus

Todd C. Helmus is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins University. He is also a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation where he specializes in irregular warfare, counterterrorism, and security cooperation. Helmus’s research has addressed the causes of militant recruitment and radicalization, new operational templates for counterinsurgency, best practices for partner capacity building, and U.S. policies to counter violent extremism.

Since 2010, Helmus has worked closely with U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan where he served as an advisor to U.S. commanders and led studies on U.S. efforts to train Afghan Special Security Forces. In 2008, he served in Baghdad as a counter-terrorism advisor to Multi-National Forces-Iraq. Helmus is the lead author of Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation. 

He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Wayne State University.