Welcome to the Shehu Laboratory

Amarda Shehu

  • Vice President & Chief AI Officer, George Mason University
  • Associate Dean for Research, College of Engineering & Computing
  • Professor, Computer Science, School of Computing
  • AI & Interdisciplinary Scientist and Technologist
  • Entrepreneur & Startup Advisor — Founder/Co-founder of AI-first ventures; advisor to startups and companies on AI strategy and AI×sector advancement in biotechnology, genomics, and drug discovery
 Amarda Shehu headshot

At a Glance

  • I lead enterprise AI strategy and an award-winning lab, converting foundational AI into scalable capability across research, education, workforce, and operations.
  • 200+ peer-reviewed publications; Fellow (AIMBE); Member (VASEM); Senior Member (IEEE).
  • Founder, AI² Nexus — a university-wide ecosystem for AI innovation and integration.
  • Founder, AI-in-Government Council — national coalition of government & industry CXOs advancing responsible AI.
  • Centers founded/co-founded — CAIEC; ISEAI; CoE in Gov Cyber Resilience; Center for Human–Machine Partnerships.
  • Creator, PatriotAI — secure campus access to 1,800+ generative-AI models.
  • Academic innovation — Virginia’s first M.S. in AI; UNIV 182 “AI for All”; Ethics & AI minor.

What We Do

We build knowledge-grounded AI: methods that connect AI theory and algorithms to enable foundational technology and advancement across sectors. Current thrusts include deep generative models for proteins and small molecules, optimization for complex loss landscapes, and large language and multimodal foundation models for natural-language understanding, bio/health informatics, materials discovery, and more. Earlier work advanced search and optimization for exploring protein structure spaces under rugged energy landscapes—insights that now inform modern scientific ML. Papers are the best entry point; audios below provide a lighter intro.

Audio Overviews (short intros)

Biology & Molecular Modeling

Methods & Applications Beyond Biology