Elham Tabassi is a Senior Scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Associate Director for Emerging Technologies in the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL). She also leads NIST’s Trustworthy and Responsible AI program that aims to cultivate trust in the design, development, and use of AI technologies.

As the ITL’s Associate Director for Emerging Technologies, Elham assists NIST leadership and management at all levels in determining future strategic direction for research, development, standards, testing and evaluation in the areas of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. She also coordinates interaction related to artificial intelligence with the U.S. research community, U.S. industrial community, international standards community, and other federal agencies; and provides leadership within NIST in the use of AI to solve scientific and engineering problems arising in measurement science and related use-inspired applications of AI.

Elham has been working on various machine learning and computer vision research projects with applications in biometrics evaluation and standards since she joined NIST in 1999. She is a member of the National AI Resource Research Task Force, vice-chair of OECD working party on AI Governance, Associate Editor of IEEE Transaction on Information Forensics and Security, and a fellow of Washington Academy of Sciences. She was listed on the inaugural TIME100 Most Influential People in AI.