Michael Bayer

Adjunct Faculty

Mike Bayer is a 31-year veteran of federal law enforcement, having served as a senior supervisory special agent with the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). During his tenure at State, Mike has served as the Director of the International Law Enforcement Training Academy (ILEA-Latin America), as director of special agent training, and as a director of the Department of State’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) Program. Mike has served as a Regional Security Officer at U.S. embassies and consulates in several overseas assignments to include: Istanbul, Paris, and Bogota, Colombia. Mike has also served as a chief of DSS’s international criminal investigations section, overseeing and directing the location, apprehension, and return to the U.S. of more than 300 fugitives who fled overseas to avoid either prosecution or prison. Mike was also the lead investigator in a benchmark sex-trafficking criminal investigation that dismantled and disrupted several international organized crime rings (Operation Wanderlust), for which he was named a criminal investigator of the year by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. Mike currently works as a program coordinator with the ATA program, conducting overseas terrorism assessment for the U.S. State Department.

In 2015, Mike received a Ph.D., from Australia’s University of Wollongong Law School in international security and global terrorism. Mike holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Duquesne University. Mike also served as a Research Fellow at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Intelligence University, Center for Strategic Intelligence Research. For that fellowship Mike researched, authored and had published a well-regarded book, “The Blue Planet: Informal International Police Networks and National Intelligence,” which received an award for academic excellence from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. Mike has several other peer-reviewed and published articles to his credit and is well-known in international law enforcement circles as an expert in global law enforcement networks.

Mike Bayer is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is married to the lovely Suzanne. They have two (now adult) children, Ingrid and Gus, and a sweet border collie named Breeze.