Brian Castner is a Senior Crisis Advisor with the Crisis Response Programme, and the weapons investigator for the Evidence Lab.

Brian is a former Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) officer in the United States Air Force, where he served in Iraq, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. In the military he specialized in unexploded ordnance, improvised explosive devices, post-blast investigations, and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. After his military experience, Brian became a writer, focusing on stories of international conflict. He is the author of three nonfiction books, and worked as a freelance journalist for the New York Times, Esquire, Wired, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and National Public Radio. He has twice received grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, to cover the US military intervention in Liberia during the Ebola outbreak, and report on the effects of climate change on indigenous villages in Arctic Canada.