Erion Plaku is the acting Senior Advisor for Artificial Intelligence in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Plaku also co-leads the National AI Research Institutes program and co-chairs the NITRD AI R&D Interagency Working Group. Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Plaku held tenured faculty positions at George Mason University and the Catholic University of America. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Rice University and was a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Plaku's research focuses on AI and robotics.