Paul Sullivan was a full professor at the National Defense University for over 22 years where he ran the Energy Industry Study program and taught industry analytics, economics of national security, and many electives and regional studies related to the Middle East and North Africa. He teaches classes on energy and environmental security at the Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at Georgetown University, the American University in Cairo, and Yale University. He is also a senior research associate at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies.

Sullivan’s PhD is from Yale, and he was in the 2006 class of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Seminar XXI.

Sullivan has given talks on five continents at places as varied as Windsor Castle and Ditchley Park in the United Kingdom; Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Jackson Hole Center for Global Policy in the United States; the Defense College of Mongolia; the Institute of Energy Economics in Japan; the German Council on Foreign Relations; the Swedish National Defence Research Institute; the headquarters of the Chilean army; the Baltic Defense College; the Jordanian Diplomatic Academy; the Diplomatic Academy of Malta; and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in Beirut.

He has been extensively published and quoted across the world and advised senior leaders on topics of his expertise. His present research interests include the energy-water-food-climate-security-resilience nexus, the U.S.-Asia-MENA energy nexus, economic and resource aspects of human security, security and resilience aspects of climate change and the environment, the energy transition, practical energy economics and policies for future changes, cyber and other security issues for energy and natural resources, U.S.-MENA relations, and many other topics.