Andrew Beam, Ph.D., is an artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur whose work connects machine learning with discovery in medicine, biology and public health. At NC State, he earned three bachelor’s degrees in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering. He went on to complete a master’s in statistics and a Ph.D. in bioinformatics with a concentration in computer science under the direction of Dr. Jon Doyle; following his Ph.D., Dr. Beam pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Beam is now an associate professor at Harvard and the inaugural Chief Technology Officer of Lila Sciences. He has received numerous awards and honors, including a Pioneer Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was recognized in Modern Healthcare’s “40 Under 40” list in 2024.

Dr. Beam’s academic lab develops core AI methods that make sense of complex clinical data to improve patient care. As of 2025, his scholarship includes more than 140 publications with over 20,000 citations. His research has been featured in major media outlets and has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and numerous philanthropic foundations.

An ongoing focus of Dr. Beam’s lab is neonatology, where his group designs new AI methods to improve outcomes for preterm infants in the neonatal intensive care unit; his research in this area has been used by the Food and Drug Administration to set treatment guidelines during pregnancy. He has helped set international standards for evaluating medical AI and co-authored the National Academy of Medicine volume Artificial Intelligence in Health Care.

Dr. Beam is also a serial entrepreneur, founder and startup advisor. He co-founded the biotechnology company Generate Biomedicines and served as its founding head of machine learning. At Generate, he created some of the first generative AI models for proteins, and he is an inventor on several key patents. Generate has received over $700 million in venture funding and now has multiple clinical trials. Today, as CTO of Lila Sciences, Dr. Beam is building an AI-driven laboratory designed to autonomously execute the scientific method at scale to accelerate discovery. Lila has been backed by over $500 million in venture funding, and its AI platform has discovered over 100 new drugs and material compositions to date.

Suha Beidas Zehl is an award-winning executive leader, speaker and author with more than three decades of experience spanning financial services, mortgage lending, technology, business intelligence and higher education. A 1986 alumna of NC State University’s Department of Computer Science, she is the founder and president of Z Technology Solutions, a consulting firm that helps organizations harness innovation and data to transform how they lead, serve and grow.

Zehl currently serves as Second Vice President on the Executive Committee of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Florida, Visionary Ambassador for the National Association of Minority Mortgage Bankers of America (NAMMBA) and as a member of several premier women’s leadership networks, including The Bold Leaders Collective and Athena’s Council. She is also a Board Advisor and Ambassador for leading FinTech partners including Prudent AI, AskBob AI and NexVal AI.

Throughout her career, Zehl has helped shape the technology and innovation landscape across mortgage and financial services. She held executive leadership roles with EPM, Guidance Residential and Long & Foster before launching her own consulting practice dedicated to the practical adoption of AI, advanced technology, business intelligence and machine learning within the mortgage ecosystem. In addition to her consulting work, Zehl teaches regularly for the Mortgage Bankers Association’s education programs, inspiring and equipping the next generation of industry professionals.

A recognized thought leader, Zehl contributes regularly to top industry publications and social media platforms. She is the creator and host of the LinkedIn series, “In the Spotlight with Suha”, where she showcases emerging leaders in real estate and financial services. As a published author, she has contributed to two books under her Rethink Everything brand: one focused on financial literacy for teens (published) and another on mentorship (coming in 2026). She also holds the trademark for The PHEAR Advantage™ framework and is developing a book expanding on this methodology (expected in 2026).

Zehl’s influence and leadership have been recognized with numerous industry honors, including HousingWire’s Women of Influence and Tech Trendsetter awards, NEXT’s Powerhouse Award, Progress in Lending’s Most Powerful Women in FinTech and Thought Leader awards, and Mortgage Women Magazine’s Mortgage Star recognition. Most recently, she received the Mentor Leader Award from the National Association of Women in Real Estate Banking (NAWRB).

Zehl is currently pursuing a doctorate in Organizational Development and Change, focusing on the transformative role of AI in leadership, strategy and organizational effectiveness. She holds a B.A. in Computer Science from NC State and an MBA from the University of Phoenix. Her credentials also include AI leadership certificates from MIT and Harvard Business School, the Certified Mortgage Banker (CMB) and Accredited Mortgage Professional (AMP) designations from her MBA, as well as Prosci Change Management Practitioner (CMP), Project Management Certified Professional (PMCP) and Harvard Management Development Program certifications.

Fluent in four languages, Zehl lives in the Greater Tampa Bay area with her husband. She is a proud mother of two sons and an avid scuba diver, traveler and culinary enthusiast.

A two-time graduate of NC State University’s Department of Computer Science, with a B.S. in 2001 and an M.S. in 2004, Erkang Zheng is a successful entrepreneur with a strong track record for technological innovation and business execution.

His philosophy, #KnowMoreFearLess, is simple: make decisions based on facts, not fear. He believes technology should be democratized, accessible to all and empower us to be better.

Zheng is the founder and CEO of Ariso Intelligence, which leverages AI to help individuals and organizations unlock their full potential through intelligent, personalized insights and collaboration. 

He previously founded JupiterOne, a security platform that helps organizations better understand and protect their digital environments. Since its inception, the company has raised $119M in funding from top investment firms, reaching “unicorn” status in 2022. JupiterOne was named the winner of multiple Global InfoSec awards, including “Most Comprehensive Cybersecurity Startup of the Year” and “Best Solution in SaaS/Cloud Security” from Cyber Defense Magazine (CDM), the industry’s leading electronic information security magazine.

With a background in cybersecurity and data engineering, Zheng approaches complex challenges with practical solutions. Before Ariso and JupiterOne, he served as CISO of LifeOmic and Head of Software Security at Fidelity Investments, and held leadership and practitioner roles in security, engineering and product management at IBM Security and Cisco.

In addition to the B.S. and M.S. from NC State, Zheng holds five patents and multiple industry certifications. He is a Triangle Business Journal 2022 CEO of the Year and C-Suite awardee, Fortress Cyber Security Leadership Award winner and Cybersecurity Excellence Awards’ Chief Executive Officer of the Year. 

Committed to giving back, Zheng serves on the NC State Computer Science Strategic Advisory Board, the United Way of the Greater Triangle Board and as an advisor for the International Leadership Foundation. When he’s not building companies, Zheng enjoys connecting with fellow entrepreneurs and sharing insights as a speaker at major conferences and community events.

Dr. Poosamani, who earned his Ph.D. at NC State in 2015 under the guidance of Dr. Injong Rhee (and his M.S. ‘en-route’), is a highly recognized Product Leader at Samsung Electronics America (SEA). In this role, he leads product efforts in digital identity and fintech wallet solutions, differential privacy, sensor AI framework, and enterprise mobility and location technology solutions.

His research interests include advanced identity and access management solutions with inherent privacy guarantees, zero-trust frameworks and design, enterprise AI design for improved cybersecurity, mobile systems design for future internet of things and energy-efficient indoor localization techniques. Dr. Poosamani’s passion for these interests have allowed him to make significant technological contributions that have positively impacted the lives of millions of people around the world.

One of the first projects Dr. Poosamani led after joining Samsung was developing the “Auto-WiFi” feature for Samsung’s premium Galaxy series of smartphones. For his contribution, Dr. Poosamani was awarded the Advanced R&D award in 2017 from Samsung Mobile Division, Korea. Until then, smartphones suffered from excessive battery drain issues due to idle power consumed by Wi-Fi chipsets. His ML-based Wi-Fi scan and power control algorithm was an industry-first, automating Wi-Fi ON/OFF functionality based on user movement, Wi-Fi, cellular signal usage and contextual patterns. This core technology was first commercialized starting with the S8 series of smartphones and is present in the millions (perhaps billions) of Samsung devices sold worldwide since.

Dr. Poosamani was the lead architect in SRA’s Fintech Services Lab, responsible for the system design and development of the Samsung’s Pay Contextual Intelligence platform for the U.S. market. This ML platform is highly scalable and serves as the base for all location-based services in Samsung Pay. The platform also provides specialized contextual services to a certain system utility pre-loaded in every flagship Samsung device released around the world.

Dr. Poosamani’s passion for innovation, product design and strategy motivated him to transition into product management, where he was involved in multiple projects within the fintech and payment ecosystem, working with multiple card networks and payment processors. His team was awarded the SRA President’s Award in 2020 for the successful completion and release of a marquee cash management consumer product inside Samsung Pay, “Samsung Money by SoFi®”. Dr. Poosamani continued his product expertise within the Mobile B2B Platform Solutions Lab. One of the B2B products he leads, Real time Location Service (RTLS), received multiple prestigious international design awards in 2024: Silver A` Design Award under the User Interaction Design category and the Gold iF Design Award under the Product/Service category. iF Design is recognized as one of the top three internationally acclaimed design awards; the RTLS product competed with nearly 11,000 entries from 72 different countries! The RTLS product is part of Samsung’s Knox Asset Intelligence suite of enterprise mobility, security and productivity solutions portfolio.

With his expertise in identity, security and privacy domains, Dr. Poosamani is the Lead Product Manager for the Mobile Driver License feature within Samsung Wallet, part of the North America Digital Life team at Samsung. This project aims to expand the Samsung Wallet experience by adding a convenient and secure way to provision state-issued IDs and driver’s licenses digitally on a Galaxy smartphone. A software development kit will allow developers to take advantage of improved integration, security and innovation for applications requesting ID information or age verification. Dr. Poosamani works in close conjunction with state jurisdictions, law enforcement agencies such as the TSA, administrative bodies such as the American Association for Motor Vehicles Administration (AAMVA), other global bodies, various industry partners and standards/ certification bodies, including the ISO, W3C and OpenID Foundation. The program is live in 6 U.S. States with multiple others in the pipeline. This project recently received a Best Presentation Award in a hackathon held on Oct 10, 2024 by the California DMV for Mobile Driver License.

Dr. Poosamani has four patents spanning network signaling and protocol design domains, with multiple others patents currently under submission and review. He has authored or co-author eight publications which have accumulated 77 citations. Dr. Poosamani has been awarded multiple STAR Awards at Samsung, in both the individual and team levels for various innovative and team management efforts. He was also showcased in the employee spotlight section for Samsung Research America for his various contributions and leadership skills.

In addition to his professional accomplishments, Dr. Poosamani has a passion for community service which started during his studies at NC State. While in school, he served in various leadership roles: Student Senate President Pro Tempore, Treasurer for the University Graduate Student Association (UGSA), orientation team member of the Office of International Services (OIS) and executive for the Indian Graduate Student Association (MAITRI). Dr. Poosamani was actively involved in mentorship and undergraduate tutoring through the STARS Computing Corps. He served as a volunteer for Service Raleigh, Shack-a-thon Habitat for Humanity and the Service NC State Meal Packaging event.

To this day, Dr. Poosamani remains active and connected with his alma mater, is a Day of Giving donor, regularly visits his colleagues and administrative friends at NC State and remains a lifelong supporter of the Wolfpack!

Dr. Robinson is a research scientist currently employed as a Principal Researcher at Microsoft in the Inclusive Futures group. She also serves as an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the University of Washington (2020-present). Dr. Robinson is a three-time graduate of NC State’s Department of Computer Science, earning her Ph.D. in 2019, her M.S. in 2016 and her B.S. in 2014. She also earned a Graduate Minor in Cognitive Science.

During her tenure at NC State, Dr. Robinson received a National GEM Consortium Fellowship, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowship. She has collaborated with researchers from Microsoft Research, Stack Overflow, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Rochester and more. Dr. Robinson has interned at Microsoft, MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, Facebook, SAS and Lexmark International.

While at NC State, Dr. Robinson was a well-rounded student, serving as a resident advisor and undergraduate and graduate research assistant. At the same time, she participated as an NCAA D1 student athlete (Wolfpack Women’s Track and Field: 200m, 300m, 400m, 500m, 4x400m).

At Microsoft, Dr. Robinson’s research lies at the intersection of human-computer interaction and software engineering. She focuses on identifying cognitive and social barriers to participation in online socio-technical ecosystems. Dr. Robinson is best known for her research on ‘just-in-time’ mentorship as a mode to empower welcoming engagement in collaborative Q&A for online programming communities, including open-source software, and her work to empower marginalized identity groups of software developers in online communities. Her most recent research investigates how to meaningfully engage knowledge workers as they apply AI to their standard work processes, focusing on techniques to understand trust in AI-powered software tools and their adoption. Building on this foundation, she is currently exploring mimetic agents – AI systems that can extend human behaviors and communication patterns – and how they influence collaboration, identity and knowledge work. Dr. Robinson also examines how individuals and organizations can address and navigate the psychological harms of AI tools, developing self-advocacy strategies and design frameworks that promote well-being in AI-mediated workplaces.

Dr. Robinson is a frequent keynote and invited speaker at conferences and symposia including: Harvey Mudd College (2025), Howard University (2025), the Carnegie Mellon University Distinguished Lecture Series (2024), the IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (2024), North Carolina A&T University (2024), the International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (2022), the Princeton University Center for Information Technology and Policy (2022), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – Open Science Communities (2022), the Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing Conference (VL/HCC) (2021), the GitHub Beyond Universe 2021 Panel: Maintainers Advancing Inclusion in Open Source (2021), Carnegie Mellon University – HCII Seminar Series (2021), the ACM ByteCast Podcast (2020), Stanford University (2020), George Mason University (2018), the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2018), the Comcast Software As Craft Conference (2017), and more.

Dr. Robinson is a prolific researcher with over 69 publications and an H-index of 26. Her papers have been presented at international conferences and professional journals, including ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), Communications of the ACM, the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction and the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

In 2024, Dr. Robinson co-authored a book, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering – Best Practices and Insights, the first book to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion in software development.

Dr. Robinson has received several professional honors and awards since earning her Ph.D., including being named a 2019 recipient of the BlackComputeHER Rising Star Award, being named a Distinguished Reviewer at the ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2020) and has been recognized as a Young Research Fellow by the Heidelberg Laureate Forum.

Dr. Robinson has been involved as a member of the Board of Directors of INTech Camp for Girls, a nonprofit whose mission is to inform and inspire girls to innovate in the technology industry. To date, INTech has reached over 400 minority girls across North and South Carolina and across the nation, through hosting one-day camps, mini-camps, summer camps and alumni experiences at tech companies.

Dr. Robinson gains a deep sense of satisfaction in giving back to the community and feels privileged that she can inspire hundreds of aspiring technologists through her work as a researcher, speaker and leader.