Sorin Adam Matei

Sorin Adam Matei is Assistant Vice President for Partnerships in Strategic Defense Innovation at Purdue University and Professor of Communication and Human-Computer Interaction in the Brian Lamb School of Communication. He founded and directs the FORCES Initiative: Strategy, Security, and Social Systems and Purdue’s M.S. in Strategy in Security and Defense Technologies.

His research and writing span strategy and security, defense technology, military decision-making, human-AI interaction, computational social science, disinformation, communication, and the relationship between technological and social systems. His work combines historical analysis, data science, modeling, simulation, and mapping to examine problems of strategy, warfare, technology, and organizational adaptation.

Dr. Matei has published defense and strategy research in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College Quarterly; Military Review; Military Strategy Magazine; and The National Interest. His defense publications include “Mission Command’s Asymmetric Advantage Through AI-Driven Data Management,” “Disinformation as Ground-Shifting in Great-Power Competition,” “Mission Modeling for Commanders: Improved Operational Effectiveness through the Use of Measurable Proxy Variables,” and “What Should a Strategist Know and Do, and Why?”

His defense-focused book projects include Audacity vs. Friction: A Quantitative Analysis of Barbarossa’s Operational Failure; Strategy, Defense Technologies and Adaptive Warfare: Historical Lessons for Leadership Competencies in War; and Data and AI Science in Military Operations: Gaining Insights on Adversarial Contest.

His published books available to readers through Amazon include Structural Differentiation in Social Media: Adhocracy, Entropy, and the “1% Effect”; Ethical Reasoning in Big Data: An Exploratory Analysis; Transparency in Social Media: Tools, Methods and Algorithms for Mediating Online Interactions; Roles, Trust, and Reputation in Social Media Knowledge Markets: Theory and Methods; and the Romanian-language works Boierii Minții, Idolii Forului, and Idolii Forului. He also co-authored Virtual Sociability: From Community to Communitas and developed the Ubimark-enhanced edition of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days.

Dr. Matei studied history and philosophy at the University of Bucharest, international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. His research has received support from the National Science Foundation, the European Union’s Horizon program, the Mellon Foundation, and the Kettering Foundation. He has served as a Fulbright Specialist.

A former BBC World Service journalist, Dr. Matei has also written for Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Esquire, and major Romanian publications. His career brings together scholarship, journalism, technology, and defense studies with a continuing interest in how people, institutions, and technologies interact under conditions of uncertainty and strategic competition.