Four ECE Alums to be Honored by A. James Clark School of Engineering

Four ECE alums have been inducted into the A. James Clark School of Engineering 2026 Class of Early Career Distinguished Alumni (ECDA): Shahriar Aghaeimeibodi (M.S. ’18 / Ph.D. ’20), Yedukondala Narenda Dwith Chenna (M.S. ’17), Sumeet Jeswani (M.S. Telecommunications ’18), and Victoria Pillitteri ’08. The ECDA recognizes Clark School alumni under the age of 40 for their leadership, innovation, service and entrepreneurship. Inductees will be honored with a ceremony and reception on September 18, 2026.

Shahriar Aghaeimeibodi, Research Science Manager, Amazon

Shahriar Aghaeimeibodi is a Research Science Manager at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, where he leads a team of seven researchers focused on superconducting qubit design and quantum error correction. His team’s work directly contributed to the development of Ocelot, Amazon’s first quantum computing chip — a breakthrough published in Nature (2025) demonstrating hardware-efficient quantum error correction via concatenated bosonic cat qubits. AWS estimates this architecture could reduce error correction overhead by up to 90%.

Shahriar earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, under the supervision of Prof. Edo Waks, where his dissertation on integrated quantum photonic devices pioneered hybrid integration methods for on-chip quantum photonics. He subsequently served as a Bloch Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Q-FARM, collaborating with Professors Vučković, Safavi-Naeini, and Fejer on diamond color centers and nanophotonic quantum interfaces.

With 59 publications and over 2,100 citations, his research spans quantum computing, quantum photonics, nanophotonics, and quantum information, with work published in Nature, Nano Letters, Optica, ACS Photonics, and Physical Review X. He holds a B.S. with a double major in physics and electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology.

Yedukondala Narenda Dwith Chenna, Member of Technical Staff, Product Development Engineer, AI/ML Inference, Advanced Micro Devices

Dwith Chenna is an Artificial Intelligence engineer and emerging leader specializing in Edge AI, efficient inference, and hardware-aware model optimization. He currently serves as Member of Technical Staff, Product Development, AI/ML Inference at Advanced Micro Devices, where he develops performance-optimized inference workflows, quantization strategies, and benchmarking tools, including contributions to the open-source RyzenAI-SW repository on GitHub, enabling scalable deployment of AI models on NPUs for AI PCs.

Previously, at Magic Leap, Chenna helped optimize perception and foundation models for its augmented reality platform, delivering real-time computer vision under strict power and memory constraints. Mr. Chenna's contributions and team effort have been recognized through the Edge AI Innovation Award 2024. Earlier roles at Cadence Design Systems and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advanced embedded vision and AI-enabled medical screening systems, contributing to validated public-health and production AI deployments.

Beyond industry impact, Chenna is an IEEE Senior Member and active leader within the IEEE Computer Society, having served as editor of FeedForward Magazine and contributing as a reviewer, mentor, and technical committee member. He is also an ambassador with the AI Accelerator Institute and a frequent invited speaker at the Embedded Vision Summit, where he shares best practices in quantization and efficient AI deployment.

Chenna’s contributions have earned international recognition, including selection to the IEEE Computer Society’s Top 30 Early Career Professionals and the IEEE Rising Star Award. Through technical innovation, open-source leadership, and community service, he continues to advance scalable, real-world AI systems that bridge research and deployment.

Sumeet Jeswani, Senior Security Architect, Google

Sumeet Jeswani is a Senior Security Architect at Google specializing in the security and governance of Agentic AI. As autonomous systems rapidly scale, his work focuses on architecting deterministic safety guardrails that protect both enterprise infrastructure and the broader public from emerging AI vulnerabilities.

Operating at the intersection of industry practice and global standard-setting, Sumeet is a core technical contributor to the OWASP Top 10 for Agentic AI, helping define the foundational security frameworks adopted by organizations worldwide. His applied research in AI security architecture has been formally validated and published in peer-reviewed IEEE and ACM venues. To bridge the gap between technical risk and public awareness, his insights have been featured in major publications including The Economic Times, AI Cyber Magazine, and Cyber Security Tribe, and he appears as a guest on leading technology podcasts to discuss AI safety at scale.

Within the global engineering community, Sumeet is relied upon for strict technical evaluation. He serves as an Ethics Reviewer for NeurIPS, a Technical Program Committee (TPC) member for IEEE and IFIP conferences, and an invited reviewer for OWASP Global AppSec. Furthermore, he actively disseminates AI defense strategies as a speaker at major cybersecurity conferences.

An alumnus of the A. James Clark School of Engineering, Sumeet leverages his rigorous technical foundation to advance the public good, ensuring that the next generation of autonomous AI is deployed securely.

Victoria Pillitteri, Manager, Security Engineering and Risk Management Group, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Victoria Pillitteri is a career civil servant and recognized leader in cybersecurity, privacy, and technology policy. As the Manager of the Security Engineering and Risk Management Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), she advances U.S. priorities in cybersecurity and emerging technology through international engagement, standards development, and cross-sector collaboration. She leads a team of researchers focused in advancing security engineering, developing the series of foundational cybersecurity risk management standards used across the U.S. government, and research in cybersecurity risk measurement and metrics. Ms. Pillitteri also leads the Joint Task Force working group, a partnership with the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and Civilian Agencies to develop a unified security framework to protect the U.S. Government from cyber-attacks.

Pillitteri has played a pivotal role in shaping globally adopted cybersecurity and privacy frameworks that underpin federal cybersecurity programs. She has led strategic initiatives that bring together government agencies, industry leaders, and global stakeholders to address complex challenges such as cyber risk management, artificial intelligence governance, and critical infrastructure protection.

She serves as a Board Member on the American Council for Technology - Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) Cybersecurity Community of Interest and a Department Editor of IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine.

Ms. Pillitteri holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland and an M.S. in Computer Science with a concentration in Information Assurance from The George Washington University. She has completed the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University.

Published September 17, 2026