Dr Sylvia Laksmi is a subject matter expert in the field of international relations and terrorism studies/international security. She has worked as a senior intelligence analyst in the Indonesian Financial Intelligence Unit since 2007 in the specialised area of financial crimes intelligence  investigations.

Sylvia received a PhD from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU, where she wrote a thesis examining Indonesian counterterrorist financing policies and their impact on terrorist operations in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific. Apart from her research work, she is also an established trainer who has provided training to government officers and private sector specialists domestically as well as at the international level, including in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Political Sciences, which included a thesis on the Abu Sayyaf Group, from the Universitas Padjadjaran (Indonesia), and an MSc focused on terrorist financing study from the University of Indonesia.