Diana Rayes is a nonresident fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. She is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her research focuses on the impact of conflict and displacement on population health, with specific interests in global mental health and humanitarian assistance.

Rayes also chairs the Syria Public Health Network, where she leads research and policy dissemination on public health trends resulting from the Syrian crisis. Her previous affiliations include the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, the World Health Organization, the Syrian American Medical Society, and the Lancet Commission on Syria, where she focused on public health and refugee issues in the Middle East. Currently, she consults for UNICEF’s Mental Health Leadership team, supporting the global scale-up of policies and advocacy initiatives to enhance the mental health and psychosocial well-being of children and adolescents worldwide.

Before joining the Atlantic Council, Rayes was a fellow at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, where she researched the policy implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on refugee arrivals in Turkey. She was also the recipient of recipient a Fulbright fellowship to Germany. She has previous affiliations with the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, the World Health Organization, the Syrian American Medical Society, and the Lancet Commission on Syria, concentrating on public health trends and refugee issues in the Middle East and Europe.

Rayes earned her BS in Psychology from Arizona State University and both her MHS and PhD from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She was a Fulbright fellow in Berlin, Germany and was recognized as a Middle Eastern and North African American National Security & Foreign Policy Next Generation Leader by New America.