Gregory Aftandilian is a Senior Fellow for the Middle East at the Center for National Policy in Washington, D.C. He is specialist on Middle East affairs and U.S. foreign policy, having spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill. Mr. Aftandilian was foreign policy advisor to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-08), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-04), and foreign policy fellow to Senator Edward Kennedy (1999). Prior to these positions, Mr. Aftandilian worked for 13 years as a Middle East analyst at the U.S. Department of State where he was a recipient of the Department's Superior Honor Award for his analyses on Egypt. His other government experiences include analytic work on Middle East affairs for the U.S. Department of Defense and the Library of Congress. Mr. Aftandilian was a research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (2006-07) and an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1991-92). Mr. Aftandilian worked as a consultant on Egyptian affairs for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (2005-2006) and was a counter-terrorism consultant for an academic project at Boston University. Mr. Aftandilian holds a B.A. in History from Dartmouth College, an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago, and an M.Sc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics.