Salam Akoum is a principal member of technical staff at AT&T labs, advanced radio technology group. She is an active contributor to 3GPP 5G standardization, responsible for specifications of the physical layer of the radio interface. Prior to joining AT&T labs, Salam worked at the centre for Social Innovation at Hitachi America R&D, where she investigated connectivity solutions, analytics and traffic optimization for IT and OT convergence, and received the Hitachi above and beyond award in 2014. Salam received her PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2012.