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Robert Rallo, PhD
Director, Advanced Computing, Mathematics, and Data Division
Robert Rallo, PhD
Director, Advanced Computing, Mathematics, and Data Division
Biography
When Robert Rallo sees a societal challenge, he knows artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can often contribute to a solution.
Rallo was part of a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) team that used machine learning to bring better understanding to COVID-19 patient outcomes. He helped another PNNL team employ a machine learning algorithm to help urban transportation analysts relieve bottlenecks and chokepoints that routinely snarl city traffic.
“We want to transform machine learning into machine reasoning,” said Rallo, a chemist and computer scientist who arrived at PNNL in 2017. “When data alone is not enough to provide an answer, we need to apply reasoning techniques to bolster our understanding and extrapolate to conditions never seen before.”
Before joining PNNL, he was an associate professor in computer science and artificial intelligence and the director of the Advanced Technology Innovation Center at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Catalonia, northeast of Spain. Rallo served as chair for the Modeling Working Group in the European Union (EU) NanoSafety Cluster (2013–2016) and as the EU co-chair of the U.S.-EU Nano-Dialogue Community of Research on Predictive Modeling and Health (2013–2015).
Rallo serves regularly as a reviewer for several national and international research organizations, including the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the European Research Council, and the European Commission.
“So how can we leverage AI to impact domain sciences and address the challenges which are relevant for the country and for the world?” Rallo asks. “That’s our motivation at PNNL.”