Major Joel Young Military Biography

Major Joel Young was born on September 4, 1968 in Northampton, Massachusetts of Patricia Young and Peter Young. He graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with High Distinction on 19 May 1990. While he was at WPI, Joel was inducted into the Upsilon Pi Epsilon computer science honor society (for which he served as President) as well as the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. Joel was also an active member of the Zeta Psi fraternity. Major Young received his commission through ROTC upon graduation and entered active duty ten months later.

His first assignment was to Keesler Mississippi for the Basic Communications-Computer Course from which he graduated first in his class. On 21 August 1991, Major Young came to Offutt AFB, Nebraska to work at Headquarters Strategic Air Command's Comm-Computer Center where he worked in the Cruise Missile Flight Simulation Section (Cruisers) which he became chief of in 1993. While at Offutt, HQ SAC stood down and the United States Strategic Command stood up and took its place.

In May 1995 the Cruisers were decommissioned and soon after Major Young transfered to the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) where he completed his Master of Science in computer science and was inducted into the Eta Kappa Nu honor society. His research efforts focused on temporal reasoning with uncertainty. Major Young graduated from AFIT on 17 December 1996 as a Distinguished Graduate. At graduation, Joel received AFIT's highest award for academic achievement, the Gross Award.

From AFIT, Joel transferred to Air Combat Command (ACC), Communications Group (ACC CG)(formerly Computer Systems Squadron) at Langley AFB, Virginia. While at the Comm Group, he served in several positions including Program Manager, Plans and Resource Flight, Element Lead, Future Plans, Chief of Rear Operations Support Center Communications, Lead Expeditionary Forces Experiment '98 Langley Site Engineer, and Chief of ACC's Systems Analysis Element, and acting Flight Commander of the Project Management and Systems Analysis Flight. In 1997 Joel deployed to Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia supporting Operation Southern Watch as the United States Central Command Communications Operations Officer, Forward providing personnel, materiel, and engineering support to AF organizations at 10 Air Force installations throughout Southwest Asia. After returning from Saudi Arabia, Major Young lead the team planning, engineering, procuring, and installing all communications for what was then the Rear Operations Support Center ($1.5M budget) to support Joint Vision 2010 and Expeditionary Forces Experiment 1998.

Major Young left Air Combat Command in July 1999 to attend Brown University as part of the Air Force Institute Of Technology's Faculty Track program. Joel was promoted to Major on 1 December 2001. After completing his PhD in Computer Science at Brown, Joel will take an Assistant Professorship at AFIT.