INI Announces Inaugural External Advisory Board

The Information Networking Institute (INI) is pleased to announce the inaugural INI External Advisory Board. The external advisory board offers strategic insights, industry expertise and diverse perspectives with INI leadership. They engage in deep discussions with each other and with the INI to ensure its mission and values are upheld and met.

"Higher education is facing many challenges — the terrain continues to shift under our feet, and having expertise from leaders across industry, academia, research and government is essential," said INI Director Dr. Dena Haritos Tsamitis. "The INI is lucky to have a strong network of partners, and I am grateful to the members of our inaugural External Advisory Board for their support."

The board will convene for its first meeting later this semester and continue to meet three times annually, bringing insights from their roles across fields.

Meet The Board Members

Diana L. Burley, PhD, is Senior Vice President of Research at the Brookings Institution and a globally recognized cybersecurity expert. She previously served as Vice Provost for Research and Innovation and professor at American University. At George Washington University, she taught, held senior administrative roles, and directed the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection. Earlier, she ran CyberCorps at the National Science Foundation. She co-chaired multiple National Academies studies and the ACM task force on global cybersecurity curricular guidelines. An elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, Diana earned two master’s degrees and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon. 

Harshvardhan Chunawala is a technologist and solutions architect leader at Amazon Web Services (AWS), helping enterprises and startups globally build and secure their most critical systems. He is a CERT-SEI Certified Cyber Forensics and Incident Responder recognized for his work in information security, healthcare, life sciences, aerospace and responsible AI. At AWS, he has authored multiple guides and playbooks that Fortune 100 companies and startups rely on. H. Chunawala is a visiting lecturer at Carnegie Mellon, where he also established the INI's first Space Practicum programs, bringing cybersecurity and cloud computing into lunar missions. As Entrepreneur-in-Residence and AWS Startups Advisor at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, he mentors PhD, postdoc and faculty founders.

Ed Engler is managing partner of Three Points Rising (3PR), a family office backing post-revenue B2B SaaS companies poised to scale and disrupt their markets. Ed previously led Pittsburgh Equity Partners, a top-quartile early-stage fund that inspired 3PR's model. An early Transarc employee, Ed founded Summa (sold to CGI) and, through his funds, backed exits to Morgan Stanley, LinkedIn, Imagine Learning, Providence Equity, Spectrio and Proofpoint among others. He serves on directorial or advisory boards of Mechanical X Advantage, bl!nk commerce, Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy and CMU's Information Networking Institute.Ed holds a CMU BS in Applied Mathematics/Computer Science and taught entrepreneurship at the INI for five years working with students from the Human Computer Interaction Instittue and the College of Engineering.

Marachel Knight serves on the boards of Ericsson, where she is a member of the Enterprise Business and Technology Committee, and Marvell Technology, Inc., where she chairs the Nominating and Governance Committee and serves on the Audit Committee. She previously served on the U.S. Department of Defense Business Board and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Advisory Council. A former AT&T senior executive with two telecommunications patents, she has been recognized by Women Who Make America, Black Enterprise, and Fierce Wireless. Marachel holds a master’s in information networking from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Florida State University. 

Wesley Myers is a Defense Intelligence Senior Level executive in the United States Department of War and President of the Board of Directors of the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics. He is an alum of Carnegie Mellon University, Johns Hopkins University and the National War College. Drawing on extensive operational experience, he integrates people-centered leadership, technological innovation and strategic vision to build unity of effort across the interagency and joint force. He is passionate about advancing STEM education, developing future technical leaders, and strengthening the workforce to address the nation’s most complex national security challenges.

Audrey Russo is the President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, North America’s largest technology trade association with over 1,400 companies represented, with a total of 37,500 technology workers. She earned a Bachelor of Science from Ohio State University and a Masters in Public Administration from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Public Affairs. Russo has previously worked for large multinational Fortune 500 companies and is an adjunct faculty member at Virginia Commonwealth University. Additionally, she also co-hosts TechVibe Radio on KDKA. 

Afrodite Sevasti, PhD, is a senior technology executive with more than 28 years of experience leading large-scale digital transformation, innovation and critical digital infrastructure initiatives. She has held leadership positions across academia, European organizations, sovereign institutions and the private sector, including GÉANT, GRNET, Munich Re HealthTech and Hellenic Growth Fund, where she served as CTO. She is currently CEO of Pharos SA, Greece’s AI Factory, leading the development of the country’s AI ecosystem and serves as a Non-Executive Board Member of CrediaBank. Since 2014, she has been a European Commission expert on Research and Innovation. Sevasti holds a PhD from the University of Patras, Greece, and is an MSIN CMU INI graduate.