Gina Turassi as director of the Oak Ridge Computational and Computational Sciences Laboratory – High Performance Computing News Analysis | Inside HPC

Gina Taurasi has been appointed deputy laboratory director for the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate (CCSD) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He replaces Sean Gleason, interim ALD since Doug Cote left for Sandia National Labs last June.

Kote, who was also the director of the Exascale Computing Project, replaces retiring CCSD ALD Jeff Nichols in 2021.

Torassi had served as director of the National Center for Computational Sciences and the Oak Ridge Center for Leadership Computing. He joined ORNL in 2011 as director of the Center for Biomedical Sciences and Engineering. In 2014, he became the founding director of the Health Data Science Institute.

Gina has decades of research leadership that leverages artificial intelligence, big data and high-performance computing to advance science, according to the lab. He has also championed large-scale computing infrastructure projects and increased capabilities at ORNL. One example is the deployment of Frontier, the world’s first large-scale computer. The effort required overcoming supply chain and labor challenges to procure millions of parts and securely install 74 HPE Cray EX supercomputer cabinets.

Torassi came to Oak Ridge after a career in radiology and the medical physics graduate program at Duke University Medical Center. Additionally, he is an assistant professor of radiology at Duke and the University of Tennessee School of Medicine, the UT-ORNL Joint School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the Bredesen Center.

He received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Aristotle University of Greece and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Duke. He is a member of the American Leadership Team and Associates. Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, American Society of Medical Physicists, SPIE (Society for Optics and Photonics International), and American Society for the Advancement of Science.

In 2016, he won the Dean’s Appreciation Award for leading a DOE-National Cancer Institute interagency collaboration focused on advancing cancer research with exascale computing. He was also part of three teams honored with Ministerial Honorary Awards, including two recognitions in 2021 for contributions to the response to COVID-19.

Locally, she has been honored by YWCA Knoxville, TN, for STEM mentoring of underrepresented groups.