Dr. Tarek El-Ghazawi is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The George Washington University, where he leads the university's Strategic Academic Program in High-Performance Computing. He is the founding director of GW’s Institute for Massively Parallel Applications and Computing Technologies (IMPACT) and a co-founder of the NSF Industry/University Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing (CHREC). His research focuses on high-performance computing, computer architectures, reconfigurable computing, and computer vision. Dr. El-Ghazawi is a co-author of the UPC parallel programming language and has published nearly 250 refereed research papers.

Dr. El-Ghazawi has served as a consultant for NASA and held teaching positions at George Mason University, Florida Institute of Technology, and Johns Hopkins University. He has chaired major international conferences and served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Computers.

His work has received funding from federal agencies and major companies, including DARPA, NSF, NASA, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. Dr. El-Ghazawi is a Fellow of the IEEE, a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, and a recipient of prestigious awards such as the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award and the Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological Innovation. He remains a key figure in advancing computing technologies globally.

Dr. Nan Wu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The George Washington University. Her research lies at the intersection of computer architecture, electronic design automation (EDA), and machine learning (ML), focusing on agile hardware development powered by ML. By integrating intelligence into design processes, her work aims to enable scalable, automated hardware development with minimal human intervention.

Dr. Wu earned her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and dual bachelor’s degrees in Electronic Engineering and Economics from Tsinghua University. She leads innovative research on leveraging ML to enhance hardware design, fostering the interaction between hardware development and AI to improve efficiency and scalability.

Dr. Payman Dehghanian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The George Washington University. He specializes in electric power systems engineering, focusing on power system reliability and resilience, data-informed decision-making for maintenance and asset management, smart electricity grid applications, and cybersecurity in energy systems. His research contributes to building resilient and intelligent power systems to meet modern energy challenges.

Dr. Dehghanian earned his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tehran in 2009, an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2011, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2017. He joined GWU in 2018, where he continues to lead innovative research in power systems and mentor the next generation of engineers.

Throughout his career, Dr. Dehghanian has received numerous prestigious awards, including the IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Professional Achievement Awards (2014, 2015), the IEEE-HKN Outstanding Young Professional Award (2015), and the 2022 IEEE IAS Outstanding Young Member Service Award. He was also honored with the 2021 Early Career Award from the Washington Academy of Sciences and the 2022 GWU Early Career Researcher Award. Recognized globally, he was selected as one of the World’s Top 20 Young Scholars in electric power systems for the next generation of researchers in 2015 and 2016.

Dr. Dehghanian’s work continues to impact the field of power systems, advancing reliability, resilience, and smart grid applications to support the evolving energy landscape.