Researcher
Dr Olesya Vinhas de Souza is a defense analysist with expertise in Russia and cybersecurity.
She leverages cutting-edge quantitative methods to gain insights into the factors that drive Russia’s foreign policy and identify changes in the operational environment that have strategic and tactical implications for NATO.
She started her trans-Atlantic career at the RAND Corporation where she published on the nexus between technology and security.
After Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, she joined the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) at the Pentagon, where she directly contributed to the development and implementation of policies to strengthen the U.S. defense posture in Eastern Europe and subsequently received an achievement award from the Under Secretary of Defense.
After moving to Brussels, she became a faculty at the Brussels School of Governance-VUB and also served as Acting Dean of Vesalius College.
She holds her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Skalny Center for Polish and Eastern European Studies at the University of Rochester.
She is a winner of prestigious George F. Kennan Fellowship (the Kennan Institute), Fulbright Fellowship (U.S. Department of State), and the Graduate Studies Fellowship (National Science Foundation).