Sorin Adam Matei, PhD, is the founder of the FORCES initiative, the associate dean for research and graduate education in the Purdue University College of Liberal Arts, and a professor of communication at the Brian Lamb School of Communication. He has a master's degree in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and a PhD in communication research from The Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California. His research examines the role of technology in influencing outcomes on a global scale. He is the author of numerous academic publications and books and designs strategic initiatives to build capacity in the humanities and social sciences. His interests cover computational social science, global online models of human interaction, and the nexus between technology, strategy, and warfare. His latest work looks at space-time analytics of military operations and ethical AI.
Jonathan Poggie, Director of Military Analytics and Computational Conflict Dynamics
Jonathan Poggie
Jonathan Poggie, PhD, is FORCES’ director of military analytics and computational conflict dynamics. As a professor in Purdue’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, he is the innovation lead for hypersonics at Purdue’s Institute for Global Security and Defense Innovation. He received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Rhode Island, and his doctorate in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University. He has a unique breadth of experience, with research publications in the computational, theoretical, and experimental aspects of fluid and plasma dynamics. More recently, Poggie has pursued the idea of flow in a more abstract sense, to provide leaders in military conflicts and civilian crises a human manageable perspective of overwhelming situational data. For twenty years prior to coming to Purdue, he worked as a research engineer and program manager at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. He is a fellow of the American Society for Mechanical Engineers and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Robert Kirchubel, PhD, is the outreach director of the FORCES initiative and the FORCES history research expert. He earned his PhD in modern European history at Purdue and is a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served across 18 time zones as an armor officer during the Cold War. A military historian specializing in the 20th-century German military, Kirchubel is the author of numerous books and articles on World War II. He teaches numerous courses on world wars and defense/security policy at Purdue. His current research project is an analysis of German casualties during Operation Barbarossa in 1941. As FORCES outreach director, he manages the TOURS de FORCES program.
