Colonel (GS) Dipl. Inform Sönke Marahrens, MPA; MMFIS is Department Head at the Center for Digitalization of the German Federal Armed Forces in Bonn.
Before he was the Director Community of Interest Strategy & Defence European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, Finland from 2021 to 2024. From 2018 to 2021 he was the Senior Research Lead for Strategy and Armed Forces at the then newly founded German Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies (GIDS) in Hamburg.
He holds a Diploma in Computer Science of University of the Armed Forces in Munich, a MPA from the Royal Military College in Canada, a Master in Military Leadership and International Security Politics from the Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, and an Executive Business Master from CASD, Rome, Italy.
By training, he is a German Air Force NATO Air Defence Officer with different leadership and managerial positions incl. Defence Planning Office and German MOD as well as Battalion Commander. Furthermore, he is a renowned expert for applied military research in the field of Modelling & Simulation, Operations Research and Concept Development and Experimentation.
His fields of expertise are Aspects of Leadership in the 21st Century, modern forms of conflict, Military Strategy, military conflict theory, Hybrid Warfare, Cyber, Artificial Intelligence for the Military and the Art and History of wargaming.
He has lectured on Military Strategy at the Führungsakademie and for the NATO Deep Program at Command and Staff Colleges of Finland, Romania, USA, Georgia, Armenia and Tunesia and more. 2020/2021 he was a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the US Marine Corps Krulak Centre.