Andre Slonopas is a technologist-in-residence at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has a diverse background as a decorated combat veteran, academician, public servant, and industry leader. His multi-decade career took him through multiple deployments and overseas tours with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, the Ranger and Sapper schools, and a flurry of other highly specialized work. He was in one of the first army officer cohorts selected for transition into Cyber Operations, where he rose through the ranks to lead the U.S. Cyber Command’s most sensitive and classified missions.
Later in life, Slonopas co-founded ElMaKor, a company focused on perovskite manufacturing, following breakthroughs in perovskite stability and performance achieved by his research collaborators and co-founding team. Slonopas chaired the American Public University System Cybersecurity Department, where he spearheaded the revamping of the cybersecurity program to address the threats of tomorrow. During his tenure, the Department nearly doubled its enrollment to over two thousand students, experienced unprecedented faculty growth, and oversaw its accreditation as an NSA Center of Academic Excellence.
Shortly after earning his PhD, Slonopas took faculty position at his alma mater before transitioning into government as a presidential management fellow. Throughout his government career, he served in a plethora of scientific and leadership roles, overseeing teams of public servants and contractors and managing over $50 million in Department of Defense Research and Development initiatives focused on perovskite materials, semiconductors, and AI.
Slonopas began his career by enlisting on his seventeenth birthday. He has authored numerous publications and conference papers on semiconductors, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and emerging national security technologies. His work contributed to the NATO Science & Technology Organization (STO), was recognized with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Best Paper awards, and was featured in defense and national security research forums.