Michael Starz

Michael Starz is the Executive Director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Critical Technology Initiative. He completed a career in the US military and served as an infantry officer with combined arms, joint, interagency, inter-governmental, and international teams.

During seven overseas deployments, Mike helped shape national goals and outcomes at the tactical and strategic levels in South Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Ukraine. As a lieutenant colonel, he served as the End Use Monitoring Chief and Army Programs Chief in Pakistan, and the Joint Staff J5 Desk officer for both Pakistan and Afghanistan with policy responsibilities to the National Security Council. As a battalion commander in the 101st Airborne Division, Mike commanded the 8-nation advisor mission, which trained the first four Ukrainian brigades prior to the war.

When state-side, Mike’s military service has also regularly been interspersed with legislative roles: he served as the Defense Fellow for Senator Jack Reed, an advocate for Army Soldier systems R&D and hardware programs to Congress, and the personal advisor to three Army Vice Chiefs. Most recently, Starz served as Chief Operations Officer of the Army's AI Integration Center, which grew from a task force within the Army Futures Command into a $50M Center leveraging CMU expertise to bring AI into Army operations.