Cyber Policy Studies Distinguished Affiliate Professor and Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Leo Mōtus is a Distinguished Professor and academician at the Estonian Academy of Sciences who has chaired the Engineering Department at Tallinn Technical University (TalTech) in Estonia for nearly a decade. He is also the head of a Lab for Proactive Technologies at TalTech and Vice-Chair of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) Cognitive Situation Management (CogSIMA), in their Systems, Man and Cybernetics division. He has also served as National Coordinator of the European Defense Agency, Secretary General of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, President of the Association of Estonian Engineers, and Research Council Member of the Estonian Ministry of Defense.
Prior to these appointments, Leo served as the National Coordinator of CapTech INFORMATION at the European Defence Agency and was a Technical Board Member of the International Federation of Automatic Control. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier Journal on Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and the voting member for Estonia for the SCI panel of NATO RTO/STO.
Leo also has extensive experience as a recipient of large and interdisciplinary contracts and grants to include those with NATO, the European Defense Agency, U.S. National laboratories such as Lincoln Laboratories, among others. He has also managed multiple industrial contracts in Estonia and Europe at the Institute of Cybernetics for nearly 20 years. For the Minerva grant, he helped negotiate with IEEE’s CogSIMA for us to host “focus sessions” during their annual conference related to our research, yielding publications, and further eliciting and developing knowledge.
Leo is an Estonian national fluent in Estonian, Russian, and English. He is an electrical engineer with a Master of Science (M.S.) in Automation from Tallinn Technical University and a Doctorate of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Computer Control from the Institute of Cybernetics in Estonia. Additionally, he holds a Doctorate of Science (D.Sc.) in Automatic Control obtained during the Cold War from the Moscow Institute of Sciences in the former Soviet Union.