On Monday, October 27th, 2025, the Applied AI in Engineering & Computer Science Symposium brought together industry leaders and NC State College of Engineering faculty, staff and students for discussion on our world’s AI-driven future and what the college can do now to ensure our students are prepared.

2025 Speakers and Panelists

Phaedra Boinodiris
Fellow, Royal Society of Arts; Co-founder and lead, IBM Consulting’s Responsible AI Practice; Member, State of North Carolina AI Leadership Council

Phaedra Boinodiris, a Fellow of the London-based Royal Society of Arts, has been dedicated to promoting inclusion in technology since 1999. She currently leads IBM Consulting’s Responsible AI Practice, which she co-founded, and in 2025 was appointed by the Governor of the State of North Carolina to serve on his AI leadership council. She is the author of AI for the Rest of Us, nominated #1 book to read in 2024 by Constellation Research. In addition, Boinodiris co-founded the Future World Alliance, a 501(c)(3) organization committed to curating K-12 education in AI ethics.

Her accolades include being named the 2030 Responsible AI Leader of the Year, receiving the United Nations Woman of Influence in STEM and Inclusivity Award, and being recognized as one of the Top 100 Women in the Games Industry.

Matthew Hetrich
Principal Scientist and Generative AI Lead, ABB US Corporate Research Center

Matthew Hetrich is a principal scientist and generative AI lead at ABB’s U.S. Corporate Research Center, where he leads advanced AI development and orchestrates global efforts across research and business units. A 2024 U.S. Inventor of the Year with over 40 patent filings, his experience spans generative AI, computer vision and perception systems for autonomous robotics. He has architected high-impact solutions, including agentic AI systems that generate significant operational savings and novel synthetic data pipelines that maximize scalability. He has also designed high-performance computing infrastructure that drastically reduces model development costs.

His technical experience includes deploying on-premises large language models, optimally quantized and tuned for efficient inference. Previously, as a computer vision product manager at Lenovo, he led global engineering teams and executed on multi-year technical roadmaps. Matthew combines a strong foundation in deep learning and systems architecture with a proven track record of leading teams to deliver complex projects from initial research to full production deployment. He holds a bachelor of science from NC State University.

Andrey Tapekha
Chief Technology Officer, Deutsche Bank North America Technology Center

Andrey Tapekha is the chief technology officer of Deutsche Bank’s North America Technology Center in Cary, NC, where he leads engineering strategy, talent development and AI enablement. Over 25 years in technology, Andrey has held leadership roles across development and CIO functions, driving innovation in cloud transformation, developer experience and applied AI.

He is the architect behind Deutsche Bank’s award-winning cloud and AI engineering learning program, which has helped thousands of engineers to learn new technology. Andrey also leads AI for Software Engineering – from strategy definition to delivery. He teaches at Columbia University and holds an M.S. in Technology Management from the same institution.

Andrey is passionate about building high-performing engineering teams and fostering hands-on learning cultures that bridge the AI skills gap.

Vrushali Sawant
Data Scientist, SAS Data Ethics Practice (DEP)

Vrushali Sawant is a data scientist with SAS’s Data Ethics Practice (DEP), where she leads the practical implementation of fairness and trustworthy AI principles into the SAS platform. She bridges the gap between ethical AI theory and real-world application, ensuring responsible AI practices are embedded throughout technology development. As a thought leader in AI governance, Vrushali regularly writes and speaks about practical strategies for implementing trustworthy AI systems. Her work focuses on translating ethical frameworks into actionable guidance for building responsible AI solutions. With over a decade of experience in analytical consulting, data management and data visualization, she helps organizations implement ethical AI practices at scale.

Vrushali holds master’s degrees in data science and master’s business administration, combining technical expertise with strategic business acumen to address both technical and organizational aspects of responsible AI implementation.

Ana Biazetti
Senior Principal Engineer, Red Hat AI

Ana Biazetti is a senior architect at Red Hat Openshift AI product organization, focusing on model customization, fine tuning and distributed training. Previously she created Financial AI solutions, working with major clients to architect and develop Gen AI enterprise solutions at IBM. Ana is an experienced speaker and has presented at several events, including TechXchange, Women in Payments, SIBOS, Think and SWE.

Ana will share her experience on the use of AI in industries, including financial services, where she worked on multiple Gen AI solutions with clients. She will also cover trends on Gen AI and hints and tips on what companies are looking for in new hires in this area.

Katya Bilyk
Associate Vice President, Hazen and Sawyer

Katya Bilyk is an associate vice president at Hazen and Sawyer in Raleigh, NC. She leads Hazen’s Digital Intelligent Water Team, which creates advanced digital solutions that apply machine learning and advanced data analytics to the water industry. She has 25 years of experience in the water industry with additional expertise in wastewater process design, modeling and optimization. She has a B.S. in civil engineering from Virginia Tech and an M.S. in environmental engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Luiz Cheim
Senior Principal R&D Engineer, ABB/Hitachi Energy

Luiz Cheim earned a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham, England, in 1993, and has been with ABB/Hitachi Energy since 2009 working as a senior principal R&D engineer. He has an extensive list of patents from the Transformer Inspection Robot to the proposed Probabilistic Transformer End of Life, from the proposed Lumada APM in cooperation with PGGA in 2011-12 to the jointly proposed Superminds Project and the Probabilistic Transformer Condition Assessment using Bayesian networks.

Cheim has an extensive list of international publications and tutorials given as a senior member of the IEEE Transformers Committee and the Cigre Paris Study Committee A2, from which he received the Distinguished Member Award in 2006, and the Best Paper Award in the Paris 2018 Session, with the paper “Machine Learning Tools in Support of Transformer Diagnostics.”

More recently, Cheim received the Golden Ticket Award from the Hitachi CEO Keiji Kojima in Tokyo in April 2023, for his proposed Transformer CO2 Extraction System from the Environment. He has certificates from MIT (2008) and Harvard University (2025) on AI Essentials for Business Applications.

Noah Roberts
Education Application Engineer, MathWorks

As an education application engineer at MathWorks, Noah Roberts partners with universities and educators along the east coast to integrate MATLAB/Simulink into teaching and research. He earned his degree in mechanical and electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and previously worked as an R&D test engineer in product design. Over the past three years at MathWorks, Noah has developed a strong focus on supporting faculty — whether it’s helping them get started with MATLAB and Simulink or guiding them through the use of MATLAB Grader and other MathWorks teaching tools. He enjoys working closely with professors to enhance student learning and simplify course administration. Noah’s goal is to empower educators with practical solutions and resources, making it easier to bring innovative technology into the classroom.

2025 Speaker Presentations

2025 Photo Gallery

2024 Symposium Recap

On Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, the Applied AI in Engineering & Computer Science Symposium brought together industry leaders and NC State College of Engineering faculty, staff and students for discussion on our world’s AI-driven future and what the college can do now to ensure our students are prepared.

Videos of the keynote speakers and industry roundtable are available below, as are event photos and the 90 posters that were presented by the college’s talented graduate students.

This is an exciting time for the college. Faculty members and graduate students are already using AI in their research, but there is more the college can do to integrate AI into curricula across engineering and computer science disciplines and to prepare students for an ever-shifting technology landscape.

Dean Pfaendtner’s Takeaways

There is no better time for our college to become a preeminent center for applied AI in engineering and computer science.

With our expansion through Engineering North Carolina’s Future, now is the time to hire faculty members with expertise in applying AI to their research and teaching. Our department heads are on board with this strategy. Beyond hiring, we are thinking critically about what the classrooms and labs of the future will look like in our new engineering building.

We can’t yet see the full view of where applied AI will take us. But we do know data-driven engineering is going to be a critical part of the future.

Even the leading experts don’t know exactly how AI will change our industries. What we need to focus on in our College of Engineering is ensuring our students are skilled in data-driven engineering and that they are comfortable navigating an ever-changing technology landscape. 

Collaboration and communication are two important skills our students need to develop.

Almost every speaker emphasized collaboration and communication as critical skills needed to build and use AI interfaces effectively. Our students need to know how to clearly share ideas, details and context not just while developing AI technologies, but also when talking and listening to end users.

Our faculty, staff and graduate students are already working on the cutting-edge in applying AI to their research.

We have a strong base to build off of, and the breadth and depth of research on display was inspiring. Our faculty members and students are creatively applying AI to so many disciplines. Posters mentioned just about anything you could think of: guide dogs, DNA storage, robotic limbs, historical Arabic documents, yams, autonomous vehicles, materials discovery and so much more.

AI is a key tool in making learning more effective and engaging.

One-on-one tutoring and narrative-centered learning are two of the most effective learning experiences. AI is a powerful tool that can scale up the use of both in classrooms to help students remain engaged and motivated, and I am excited to see our continued developments in this space. 

Investors are interested in AI, but a lot of work needs to be done to ensure infrastructure is ready.

There needs to be a massive shift to increase our global data storage capacity so that all industries and academic settings can embrace and integrate AI into their work. As LLMs took off, it put more and more pressure on our power grid and resources. Part of moving toward an AI-driven future is ensuring we have the infrastructure to support it. Our college has been working for more than a decade to develop the power grid of the future through the FREEDM Systems Center.

2024 Speaker Presentations

2024 Advisory Committee

• Edgar Lobaton, Chair
• Yaroslava Yingling
• Lirong Xiang
• Munindar Singh

2024 Photo Gallery