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I am currently the head of Emerging Technologies in Samsung Research America.  My team is tasked with identifying promising external innovations and partnerships,  with the goal of incubating them as internal R&D efforts and/or product concepts. We also work with our corporate venture teams to perform due diliegence on investment candidates, spanning the seed stage to Series C. Each year, we work with over 1000 startups and 50 universities across the US and Canada, through early-state research funding programs along with startup incubation and accelerator programs.

I served at the National Science Foundation between 2012 and 2024, serving in various programmatic and leadership roles, starting from a Program Officer to the inaugural Division Director in the newly formed Directorate of Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP), overseeing the Division of Innovation and Technology Ecosystems. Until October 2021, I was in the NSF Directorate of Computer & Information Science and Engineering (CISE), where I last served as the Deputy Division Director of the Division of Computer and Communication Foundations (CCF).  Prior to that role, I was a Program Director in the Computer and Network Systems division, where I managed wireless networking and mobile computing research within the Networking Technologies and Systems (NeTS) program at NSF. 

In my role at the NSF, I implemented a large majority of the funded provisions specific to the TIP Directorate in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. I oversaw the flagship NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) program which is one of the largest programs at the NSF to-date, with $160M per award aimed at fostering a virtuous cycle of innovation spanning R&D, technology translation, workforce development, entrepreneurship and industry formation, all leading to economic development across various parts of the country. My division also ran capacity building programs, such as the Accelerating Research Translation (ART) program, the Enhancing Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity (EPIIC), as well as Workforce Development programs such as the Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT) program.  In mid-2023, I launched a new unit focused entirely on Emerging Technologies within my division along with five programs in a 12-month span aimed at AI/ML, biotechnology, wireless communications, disaster mitigation and assessing technology outcomes. 

I am an IEEE Fellow, elevated to this rank for the Class of 2016. I have received multiple awards from the National Science Foundation for my program contributions and teamwork.  I am life member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). I have 38 US patents and several international patents, along with over 40 peer-reviewed conference and journal publications. I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002. I previously received my Masters degrees in Applied Mathematics and Computer Engineering from UIUC in 2000, and 2002 as well. My undergraduate institution is the College of Engineering, Guindy, from where I earned my B. Engg. in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 1997. 

I served for nearly a decade (2014 - 2023) as the co-chair of the Wireless Spectrum Research and Development Interagency Working Group (WSRD IWG), which co-ordinates spectrum-related research and development activities across the Federal government.  I spearheaded the creation and launch of the $100 million Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program that has created four advanced wireless research platforms in regions across the United States since 2018. Within the CCF Division at NSF, I enabled cutting-edge research in two of the 6 research themes within the Big Ideas @ NSF: "The Quantum Leap: Leading the next Quantum Revolution", and "Harnessing the Data Revolution".

At the National Science Foundation, I also ran various other programs relevant to pushing the frontiers of computing and communications research. Some of these programs are: Resilient and Intelligent NextG Systems (RINGS),  Spectrum Innovation Initiative (SII), CISE Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI), Expeditions in Computing, Algorithms in the Field (AitF), Spectrum Efficiency, Energy Efficiency, and Security (SpecEES), Industry/University Collaborative Research Centers (I/UCRC), and Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

Prior to NSF, between 2002 and 2012, I was with Bell Labs, the research arm of Lucent Technologies which later became Alcatel-Lucent in 2006.  I was a Member of Technical Staff at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, in the Networking Research division. My research interests dealt with Networking in the Cloud, Green Networking and Software Defined Networks. In this role, I helped pioneer the development of the first commercial carrier-grade Software Defined Network Platform (ALU 9980 AINP) between 2006 and 2008, with industry-leading features such as service-chaining, and network function virtualization. The product earned over $100M in revenues when we built it in an internal incubation venture, prior to handing it over to the product unit. This work was based on our research dating back to 2004. In addition to this, I have worked extensively on wireless ad hoc/mesh networks, sensors/RFID systems with specific focus on algorithms for enabling efficient operations of these systems.