Speakers

Dr. Liaghati leads MITRE’s Trustworthy & Secure AI Department and MITRE ATLAS, where she passionately drives research and developments in the public interest with a collaborative global community of industry, government, and academia. Leading her department of 55+ scientist and engineers and serving the community with the not-for-profit, objective, MITRE perspective, she is dedicated to working together to create and openly share actionable tools, capabilities, data, and frameworks for trustworthy and secure AI like ATLAS, an ATT&CK-style framework of the threats and vulnerabilities of AI-enabled systems.

Dr. Liaghati is a 2025 Fed 100 Winner and has worked across the community to improve the common understanding of AI security concerns for many years. Her work in AI security quickly started expanding into broader AI assurance concerns, including AI interpretability, reliability, robustness, equitability, safety, and needs for privacy enhancement. Her current focus under ATLAS and across the international community is to build protected mechanisms for increased knowledge and incident sharing across government and industry in both AI security and the broader areas of AI assurance.

Dr. Liaghati also chairs the NATO Science and Technology Organization Research Task Group on the AI Assurance and Security and the 2025 Symposium on AI Assurance & Security, focused on fostering an enduring collaborative community of NATO organizations and industry partners, leveraging the Science and Technology Organization to shape future interoperable capability developments in AI security and assurance.

Robert A. Martin, Senior Principal Engineer at MITRE, has dedicated his career to solving some of the world’s most difficult problems in systems and software engineering. His work focuses on the interplay of risk management, cyber security, and quality and assurance. For more than 25 years, Robert has applied his expertise to international cybersecurity initiatives such as CVE, CAPEC, and CWE, which host large active vendor and research communities, and is now working on standardizing the Software Bill of Materials and the supply chain security System of Trust™. He is frequently invited to speak on security and quality issues pertaining to software-based technology systems and the work of the IIC and has published numerous articles and presentation. He also contributed to or authored over 70 standards. Currently, Robert is actively engaged in defining and promoting MITRE’s supply chain security System of Trust™ framework and community efforts, evolving the ideas and standards for software bill of materials (SBOMs) and assurance of software systems as well as incorporating these concepts into the Digital Twin Consortium’s work and exploring how MITRE can help the community understand their supply chains and the risks they present.

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Phillips is the Director of Cyberspace Operations and Warfighting Communications, and Chief Information Officer, Headquarters Air Combat Command, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. He leads a staff and two subordinate units responsible for delivering enterprise-level information technology and expeditionary programs to increase the U.S. Air Force's ability to provide combat forces to combatant commanders. Brig. Gen. Phillips provides the strategic vision, policy, guidance and advocacy to drive the engineering and integration to build, extend, operate, secure and defend the Air Force portion of the Department of Defense global network. He is responsible to organize, train and equip cyberspace capability and communications for the command’s 35 wings, 1,000 aircraft, 12 bases and 263 worldwide operating locations with 154,219 total force military personnel.

Brig. Gen. Phillips commissioned in 1999 from Officer Training School, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. He has served as the Director of Staff, Headquarters Air Combat Command, Commander, 67th Cyberspace Wing, the Air Combat Command Information Warfare Division Chief, Executive Officer to COMACC, Commander, 390th Cyberspace Operations Squadron, JBSA-Lackland, Texas; Commander, 35th Communications Squadron, Misawa Air Base, Japan; Chief, Mission Support Colonel Assignments, Manpower, Personnel, and Services Directorate, Headquarters United States Air Force, the Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration, specialization in computer information systems from Saint Leo College in Langley AFB, Virginia and a master’s degree in information resource management from Air Force Institute of Technology in Wright- Patterson AFB, Ohio.

Rohan Vaidyanathan is Vice President of Product for Content Intelligence at Hyland. With over 15 years of experience in technology leadership, he previously served as VP of Product at Kelvin Inc. and held senior product leadership roles at IBM, where he led data platform and AI initiatives as part of Watson Data & AI. Rohan brings deep expertise in enterprise data, AI governance, and scaling AI solutions. He holds an MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler and a Computer Science degree from the University of Mumbai.

Stephen M. Wallace is the Defense Information Systems Agency chief technology officer. He also serves as the Emerging Technology Directorate director and focuses on delivering innovative processes, services and capabilities across the agency. The Emerging Technology Directorate develops, executes, prioritizes and collaborates EM-based needs, such as zero trust, 5G, Quantum Resistant Cryptography, and DOD IT Standards.

Previously, Wallace served as the technical director of DISA’s Development and Business Center, where he worked on integrating commercial and government-owned technologies in support of the agency’s emerging technologies. Wallace’s other former roles within DISA include chief of cyber innovation and chief engineer for Department of Defense Enterprise Email.

Prior to joining DISA, Wallace was a government contractor for Computer Sciences Corporation. During this time, he worked to build a variety of enterprise class collaboration, identity management and authentication systems for the federal government.

Wallace has a master's degree in cybersecurity, and a bachelor's in telecommunications, both from Capitol College. He holds a Certified Information Systems Security Professional certification and is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School Senior Executive Program.