Ekaterina Drozdova Seattle Pacific University, USA

Ekaterina “Katya” Drozdova, PhD, is an associate professor of Political Science in the School of Business, Government, and Economics at Seattle Pacific University. She has lectured extensively and taught courses on subjects ranging from Research Methods in Social Science to Global Security, Strategy, History, Information, and Political Economy as well as carried out a number of research projects in these areas which successfully utilized both qualitative and quantitative techniques.

Professor Drozdova has earned a PhD and MPhil in Information Systems from New York University’s (NYU) Stern School of Business, Department of Information, Operations, and Management Sciences; as well as an MA in International Policy studies and BA in International Relations from Stanford University. Her research interests broadly focus on understanding how systemic risks and technology choices help shape operational strategies—with emphasis on organizational threat prevention and response applications in diverse contexts: from countering terrorist networks to securing energy, cyber, and other critical infrastructures. 

Katya has been actively involved with leading military, policy, law enforcement, and business professionals in identifying mission-critical challenges and formulating effective global responses across multiple organization risk areas. Her recent work and publications have dealt with issues of U.S. national and international security – specifically addressing the problems of hybrid and asymmetric low-tech threats in the high-tech age – as well as with optimization of organizations’ human and technological networks for improved success rate in complex and hostile environments.

Prof. Drozdova is an affiliate with the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC) at Stanford and Princeton Universities as well as a principal investigator for “Mining Afghan Lessons from Soviet Era” (MALSE) research program, which has been funded by the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense’s (OSD) Human Social Cultural and Behavioral (HSCB) Sciences program through the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism Department and the Naval Postgraduate School. She has been a fellow at NYU’s Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace as well as Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). At CISAC, Katya has also been a member of the Consortium for Research on Information Security and Policy funded by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and comprising leading scholars as well as industry and government practitioners, including former directors of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).