
Bio: Dr. Nancy R. Mead is a Fellow at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University, focusing on security requirements engineering and software assurance curricula. She previously served as SEI’s director of education (1991–1994). With over 150 publications, her research interests span software security and requirements engineering. Before SEI, Mead was a senior technical staff member at IBM Federal Systems, working on large real-time systems and managing IBM’s software engineering education. She has developed and taught software engineering courses for both academic and professional audiences. Mead serves on editorial boards for the International Journal of Systems and Software Security and Protection and the Requirements Engineering Journal, and holds memberships on the IEEE TCSE Executive Committee and the Open University Advisory Board. A Fellow of IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society, and a Distinguished Educator of the ACM, she has received the IEEE Distinguished Education Award (2015) and was named a Parnas Fellow at Lero in 2019.

Bio: Hamid Marvi is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Arizona State University, where he also holds the Fulton Entrepreneurial Professorship and directs the Bio-Inspired Robotics, Technology, and Healthcare (BIRTH) Lab. He is a Senior Global Futures Scientist and an Alliance Fellow of the Mayo Clinic–ASU Alliance for Health Care. His research integrates materials science, robotics, and biology to develop soft and magnetic robots for medical applications. Dr. Marvi’s work has been featured in Science, PNAS, Advanced Materials, and Nature Scientific Reports, as well as in major media outlets like The New York Times and BBC. His honors include Senior Membership in the National Academy of Inventors, the 2024 ABRC New Investigator Award, the Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis Award, and multiple national awards for innovation in robotics and soft materials.