Dr. Matei brings conflict mitigation, trade-off thinking, and disinformation expertise to the Center

Dr. Sorin Adam Matei has joined the Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue as a Senior Research Fellow to lead innovative research and training that combines technology and strategic perspectives. Dr. Matei serves as the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education in the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University, and has applied big data and simulation analysis to military and diplomatic affairs.

He is the founding director of the FORCES initiative (Strategy, Security, and Social Science) at Purdue, which developed groundbreaking methods to explain great power and military conflicts. He also studies the impact of digital technology platforms on international competition and conflict, including knowledge formation, trust, and disinformation. His groundbreaking research on Wikipedia showed how 1% of editors are responsible for 80% of the content.

As a Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue Senior Research Fellow, Dr. Matei will contribute to the Center’s unique focus on training diplomats, civil servants, political analysts, policymakers, and military officers in trade-off thinking and planning through a research-driven bidding game called “Tech Supremacy.” Dr. Matei created the game in collaboration with the Envision Center at Purdue to help users understand and practice the subtle ways in which leading technologies are adopted by the global market.

“Maintaining the balance between economic success and political stability is a difficult—yet critical—game. I look forward to utilizing the Center’s platform and resources to train and coach diplomats, policymakers, government officials and other key players in the essential skills of trade-off thinking and strategic planning to help them achieve and maintain this delicate balance,” said Dr. Matei.

Drawing on his communication research, Dr. Matei will also offer a course through the Center on how to uncover the weak points of adversarial disinformation campaigns. He will explain how disseminators of disinformation achieve their goals and how knowing their tactics helps defang harmful disinformation campaigns.

“The addition of Dr. Matei and his research to our team of world-class Fellows demonstrates the Center for Tech Diplomacy’s leading position as America’s first ‘tech tank,’” said the Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue Director Bonnie Glick. “His work and outreach to the diplomatic and policymaking communities will be of enormous benefit to decisionmakers.”

Dr. Matei holds degrees in History (Bucharest University), International Relations (The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University), and socio-technological communication research (Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California). Early in his career, he worked as a journalist for the BBC World Service and Radio Free Europe and has published several books on Eastern European current affairs along with his other rich academic publishing portfolio.

About The Center For Tech Diplomacy At Purdue

The Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue is an independent “tech tank” founded in 2021 to advance freedom through trusted technologies and democratic principles. It brings engineering expertise to the intersection of technology and U.S. foreign policy and serves as a go-to resource on critical technology issues for the diplomatic community, while partnering with industry, academia, and policymakers.

For more information, visit techdiplomacy.org and follow the Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.