Aaron Safer-Lichtenstein is a graduate research assistant at START for the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) project. Before coming to work at START, he graduated with a B.A. in psychology and history from the University of Pittsburgh in 2010. In college, he participated in research at the Learning Research and Development Center.  His research included studying brain waves to understand cognitive processes that effect reading patterns. Upon completion of college, Safer-Lichtenstein worked for a survey research company, Abt SRBI, for two years. At START, he worked on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) as an analyst with the general research team from 2012 to 2016. Currently, he is a graduate research analyst with the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) project. As part of the team, Safer-Lichtenstein has contributed to reports for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and has contributed to additional grant solicitations that won funding from NIJ. Finally, Safer-Lichtenstein has authored or co-authored several manuscripts using data from the PIRUS project in respected, peer-reviewed journals. 

Outside of START, Safer-Lichtenstein’s terrorism research interests include testing criminological theory on empirical data related to terrorism as well as investigating the life-course processes of individuals who radicalize into terrorism. Other criminological interests include the relationship between perceptions of the police and subcultures of violence over time and the factors influencing the likelihood that a crime victim or a third party witness reports an offense to authorities.