Malek Itani is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, nominated by Professor Shyam Gollakota in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Working at the intersection of wireless systems, embedded audio, and AI, his research builds real-time “hearables” — like earbuds, hearing aids, and smart glasses — that use artificial intelligence to give people control over what they hear. He has built systems that use AI, running entirely on the hearables themselves, to intelligently focus on the sounds that matter: isolating a single speaker in a crowd, or creating a “sound bubble” that keeps the people right around you clear while quieting the rest of the room, all in real time.  In 2025, he co-founded Hearvana AI, raising a $6 million round to bring this technology out of the lab and into everyday devices. He holds a B.E. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the American University of Beirut (AUB), where he specialized in antennas and microwave engineering and served as president of the AUB Robotics Club. His work has been covered by MIT Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Le Monde, The Verge, and Popular Science.