Dr. Joe Adams is a retired Army officer, former CIO, and founder of the Michigan Cyber Range. Joe retired as a Colonel from a 26 year career in the US Army Signal Corps, which included diverse assignments such as designing networks for NATO, teaching hacking at the US Military Academy (USMA), and building security programs as the Chief Information Officer of the National Defense University. After retiring, he joined Merit Network and built the Michigan Cyber Range. Throughout his career, he has been an innovative force for technological and cultural change in the organizations he works with. 

Joe earned a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University and a M.Sc. in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Arkansas. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where his research focused on network security in mobile ad-hoc networks. He also is a CISSP, a Senior Fellow of the Ponemon Institute, and a Senior Member of the IEEE.