Kenton Thibaut is a senior resident China fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), where she leads China-related research and engagements in the Democracy and Technology Initiative.In this capacity, she serves as head of China research and as principal investigator for projects examining China’s role in the global technology ecosystem, and Chinese foreign policy priorities vis-à-vis the digital domain.

Prior to joining DFRLab, she served for five years in the private sector working on Chinese government relations. Before this, she served as a Research Assistant at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, where her research focused on Chinese elite politics.

Thibaut is a PhD candidate at Georgetown University, where she focuses on China’s role in the global information environment. She has received various research fellowships, including a Fulbright Fellowship, Blakemore Freeman Fellowship, and Boren National Security Fellowship. She was also named as a 2021 security fellow at the Truman National Security Project.

She holds an M.A. degree in International Economics from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and completed a graduate certificate in Chinese studies at the Hopkins Nanjing Center in Nanjing, China. Thibaut also currently serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, where she co-teaches a graduate-level course on global information operations.

Shivam Shankar Singh is a data analyst, campaign consultant and author of the bestsellers “How to Win an Indian Election” (Penguin Random House, 2019) and “The Art of Conjuring Alternate Realities: How Information Warfare Shapes Your World” (HarperCollins, 2021).

After graduating from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor with a Bachelor of Science in Economics in 2015, Shivam stated his career in the world of politics and policy. He was appointed as a Legislative Assistant to Member of Parliament (LAMP) Fellow in May 2015, and worked in the Indian Parliament providing legislative research support to a Member of Parliament (MP). After that, he went on to manage Data Analytics for some of India’s largest political parties in several state elections. Shivam worked on the 2017 Punjab Legislative Assembly Elections, then headed campaigns and data for India’s largest party in the country’s north-east region. He was also in-charge of overseeing the party’s campaigns in the states of Manipur and Tripura (2017 – 2018), campaigns that led to the party forming the government in these states for the first time in history.

He then went on to write his first book that became an instant bestseller. After that, he founded a data analytics and research company that worked on electoral data and market research and later headed data analytics for a policy consulting firm. Shivam is currently building an AI powered sentiment analytics company that combines social media data, on-ground surveys and A/B testing to gauge public sentiment for better decision making. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Policy Perspectives Foundation, researching topics related to cybersecurity and information warfare.

Surendrabikram Thapa is a research faculty at Virginia Tech, USA where he primarily works on leveraging cutting-edge deep learning for real-world applications. His research interests include Natural Language Processing (NLP), large language models (LLMs), and computer vision applications. Currently, his research is funded by various local and federal government agencies in the USA along with several industry partners. He has also served as a program committee and organizer for numerous conferences and workshops.

Mimrah Mahmood is the VP for Enterprise in Asia Pacific at Meltwater. With over 20 years of experience in digital media, he helps organisations to create best-in-class frameworks for PR and Marketing reporting. As the main point person for global companies in APAC, he advises leading companies on data tracking, social analytics and competitive intelligence.