Amarda Shehu

Amarda Shehu is the Associate Vice President of Research for the Institute of Digital InnovAtion (IDIA) and a Professor in the Department of Computer Science in the School of Computing in the College of Engineering and Computing at George Mason University. She is also the Inaugural Founding Co-Director of George Mason University’s Transdisciplinary Center for Advancing Human-Machine Partnerships (CAHMP). Shehu served as an NSF Program Director in the Information and Intelligent Systems Division of the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering during 2019-2022.

She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and has received several awards, including the 2022 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the 2021 Beck Family Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Research and Scholarship, the 2018 Mason University Teaching Excellence Award, the 2014 Mason Emerging Researcher/Scholar/Creator Award, the 2013 Mason OSCAR Undergraduate Mentor Excellence Award, and the 2012 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award.

Her research is regularly supported by various NSF programs, the Department of Defense, as well as state and private research awards.

Research Interests:

Artificial Intelligence, Stochastic Optimization, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Optimization for Deep Learning, Generative Models, Language Models, Bioinformatics, Computational Biophysics.

Research

• 2022-2025: The cultural, economic, and institutional determinants of AI infrastructures and their consequences in global contexts. Funded by the Department of Defense Minerva Program.
• 2022-2023: Detection of Malware through Side Channel Analysis. Funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia Cyber Initiative.
• 2019-2023: Graph Generative Deep Learning for Protein Structure Prediction. Funded the National Science Foundation.
• 2019-2023: Automated Analysis and Exploration of High-dimensional and Multimodal Molecular Energy Landscapes. Funded by the National Science Foundation.
• 2021-2022: Mechanisms of Amyloid Interaction and Signaling through the Nicotinic Receptor. Funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia, Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases Program.
• 2018-2022: Guiding Exploration of Protein Structure Spaces with Deep Learning. Funded by the National Science Foundation.
• 2018-2021: Statistical Inference for Molecular Landscapes. Funded by the National Science Foundation.
• 2019-2020: Evaluation of Molecular Structures via Deep Learning. Funded by the Jeffress Trust Awards Program in Interdisciplinary Research.

Degrees

• PhD, Computer Science, Rice University
• MS, Computer Science, Rice University
• BS, Computer Science and Mathematics, Clarkson University