Annette Sobel, M.D., M.S., FAAFP, FAsMA, FAAN (h), FAeS, Academician, IAASM, Major General (AZANG, Ret.)

CEO and Co-Owner

Adjunct Professor

Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, School of Nursing and Texas Tech University, Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Annette Sobel is a former Major General in the Arizona Air National Guard, and a former Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Education, and Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Nursing, teaching Bioinformatics to Doctoral Nursing Students at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the former Executive for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Health Security Initiatives, at TTU. She served on the Texas Governor’s Covid-19 Task Force, and as Co-Director and Founder of TTU’s Peace Corps Prep Program for undergraduate students and collaborated on military family nutritional programs such as Jump2Health ® with Dr. Debra Reed, PhD, RD, LD. She is a member of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board and was a 2018 recipient of the Lubbock YWCA’s Women of Excellence (Government category). She is an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, recognized for her pioneering work in telemedicine.

She is residency trained in Family and Community Medicine and Aerospace Medicine and is a Hyperbaric Medicine Specialist, certified by the U.S. Navy. As a physician-human factors engineer, she established the Ergonomics program at Sandia National Laboratories where she was promoted as a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff. She is a guest scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the Biosciences Division. She was a senior advisor to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where she helped solved challenges to include nutrition, disaster management, and early detection and prevention of infectious diseases. She also worked at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), identifying peaceful, collaborative efforts for international former weapons scientists. Dr. Sobel also served as Senior Advisor for Biosecurity Engagement in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense/Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Program. Presently, she is a member of the World Federation of Scientist’s Pollution Prevention and One Health panel, and Chair of the Permanent Monitoring Panel for mitigation of acts of terrorism.

Dr. Sobel is a Commissioner on Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Military Preparedness Commission and Chairs the Military Value Task Force.

Dr. Sobel served as a Major General in the Arizona Air National Guard, retiring in 2008 after twenty years of military service and serving as the first Director of Intelligence for the National Guard Bureau, immediately post 9/11 and during the Hurricane Katrina response. Trained as a military and civilian flight surgeon, she was an Army Astronaut Candidate in 1989. Dr. Sobel served in combat in Operation Just Cause and supported Space Shuttle Operations at NASA-Dryden Test Flight Facility during Operation Desert Storm. While Senior Flight Surgeon for the 57th MEDEVAC Detachment, Fort Bragg, N.C., Dr. Sobel was responsible for all pre-hospital medical care and training, to include humanitarian missions in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

She served as the Senior Assistant to the Chief, National Guard Bureau, as well as the Chief’s Advisor for Civil-Military Support during 9/11. Dr. Sobel served as the first woman Homeland Security Director and Deputy Secretary of the Department of Public Safety for the State of New Mexico from 2003-2005. She was a US Army and USAF special forces combat medical instructor and commander of the EMT-Paramedic and OB/GYN Nursing School at Ft. Bragg, NC.

Dr. Sobel served a triennium of service on the National Board of Directors of the Girl Scouts of the USA. She was a Board Member of the South Plains Council of BSA and President of West Texas Komen Foundation, Lubbock, and Board member for the Lubbock Women’s Shelter and the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra. She received the New Mexico Anti- Defamation League’s Distinguished Public Service Award, for work encouraging diversity in interprofessional decision-making, and establishing the First Amendment Working Group for Homeland Security nationwide. She is recipient of the NATO award for career service devoted to understanding the science of weapons of mass destruction and countermeasures in disasters of all types, to include humanitarian.  She is recipient of the YWCA Women in Excellence in Government Award in 2019. She is a lifelong Rotarian interested in international projects and developed a program to assist new mothers in post-partum nutrition in Panama.

Dr. Sobel’s research focuses on information fusion, and human factors integration into a wide range of solutions to help solve warfighter, civil-military humanitarian and disaster medicine challenges. These include new platforms include social media tracking of disease outbreaks across the Midwest Animal Health Corridor, stand-off multi-source threat detection and feature extraction from imagery, applications of augmented reality, and virtual reality and robotic training platforms to assist medical first response teams, people with disabilities, decision-assisting for detection of emerging infectious diseases, and training platforms for medical response and for pre-hospital care.