PNNL

Associate Laboratory Director Deborah (Deb) Gracio from the National Security Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) oversees a comprehensive suite of national security initiatives, steering pivotal programs and partnerships. Her leadership ensures the delivery of cutting-edge scientific insights and transformative technologies to sponsors, including the Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and the U.S. Intelligence Community.

With a distinguished tenure spanning over 35 years at PNNL, Gracio has held numerous strategic positions that underscore her expertise and dedication. Prior to her current role, she served as the chief operating officer of the National Security Directorate, where she excelled in capability development, mission execution, and project management. Her strategic vision has been instrumental in advancing multi-disciplinary research across basic sciences and national security sectors, with specific focus in biodefense, computational biology, computational chemistry, and atmospheric modeling.

In previous roles, Gracio has driven innovation and amplified PNNL’s national security research and development portfolio. As the Director for the National Security Program Development Office, she formulated business strategies and led teams to diversify and expand research activities. Her leadership and mentoring impacted hundreds of staff as the director for the Computational and Statistical Analytics Division and director of the Data-Intensive Computing Research Initiative.

Notably, Gracio was the project lead for the Extensible Computational Chemistry Environment, an integral component of DOE’s flagship Molecular Sciences Software Suite—a computational chemistry software (NWChem) which has been deployed worldwide—and for which she and her team received an R&D 100 Award and a Federal Laboratory Consortium Award.

Gracio’s contributions have earned her recognition from DOE with a Certificate of Accomplishment from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program and an Outstanding Woman in Engineering Award. She actively contributes to the leadership and scientific community through her roles on various advisory boards, including the Brookhaven Science Associates Board of Directors at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Executive Advisory Board for the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and as the chair of the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture Executive Advisory Board at Washington State University. A senior member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Gracio is also an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her contributions extend to serving on the IEEE Information Systems Strategy Council and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology  Smart Grid Advisory Board, as well as serving on numerous philanthropic boards. 

Gracio received her MS and BS degrees in electrical engineering from Washington State University.