Topic: Purnomo Yusgiantoro

Purnomo Yusgiantoro (born 16 June 1951 in Semarang, Central Java), is an International expert in economics of energy, economics of defense, technocrat and a genius academician on interdisciplinary sciences from energy, economic and global strategic defense, and a former president-secretary general of OPEC, former Minister of Energy in three eras, and Minister of Defense in the Second United Indonesia Cabinet.

Purnomo completed his engineering undergraduate studies at the Bandung Institute of Technology in 1974. He then pursued his Masters (MSc in Engineering) in 1986 from the Colorado School of Mines and (MA in Economics) in 1988 from the University of Colorado at Boulder, followed by a PhD in "Resource Economics" at the Colorado School of Mines in 1988. In 1992, DR. Purnomo Yusgiantoro graduated in First Rank from National Defence Institute Lemhannas granted Wibawa Seroja Award

Served as Adviser to the MInister (1993–1998), then Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources (2000–2009) and Chairman of the Government Board of PERTAMINA (2000–2002). He has been teaching universities/school of management since 1980s and became permanent lecture at the University of Atma Jaya Jakarta since 1990s. Inaugurated as Professor of Economic Development at the University of Atma Jaya (2002) and Bandung Institute of Technology (2009). After graduated from National Defense Institute (Lemhannas) in 1992, he was active in lecturing at Lemhannas until then promoted as Vice Governor of the Institute (1998–2000). Held a powerful position as Governor in 1996-1998, Secretary General and President of OPEC in 2004 for the first time in the OPEC history. He began his work in consulting operation to include engineering projects, project management, risk analysis, and digital simulation models. After completing his PhD degree, his consultancy projects more on the economic analysis. One of the projects was to supervise a government team incooperation with the World Bank to study Energy Pricing and Policy for Indonesia (1989–1991). The founder of IIEE-the Indonesian Institute for Energy Economics (1989). His appointment as defense minister in the Indonesian Cabinet (2009–2014) surprised many people and analysts as his extraordinary expertise is in economic development and energy. Many analysts opine that he is assigned to the post in order to modernize and revitalize the national defense strategy to deal with the economic global and regional challenges. So far, his policies in national defense have shown significant progresses in the revitalization of defense industry and the revitalization and consolidation of military in the national defense. Shortly, He has gained respects from other defense ministers of other powerful countries including the last visit of Secretary Robert Gates. His policy of "total defense" combining socio-economic welfare aspect, technology aspect, rule of law aspect, modern military strategy aspect and international strategy aspect has been deemed successful so far.