Deb Gracio

As Associate Laboratory Director of the National Security Directorate (NSD) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Deb Gracio oversees the portfolio of national security programs and partnerships at PNNL. She is responsible for over 1,500 staff members and $700 million annual research budget. Under her leadership, PNNL delivers scientific insights, tools, and methods to deploy impactful science and technology to sponsors in the Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security, the Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, and the Department of State.

Prior to assuming the ALD role, Deb served as NSD’s Chief Operating Officer, driving capability development, mission execution, and risk management, of the directorate. In her 30+ years at PNNL, Deb has led the strategy, research, development, and management of multiple cross-disciplinary, multi-laboratory programs focused on the basic sciences and national security sectors. Her work included research and development of integrated computational environments for biodefense, computational biology, computational chemistry, and atmospheric modeling.

In previous roles, Deb served as the Director for the National Security Program Development Office, overseeing a $600 million portfolio, developing business strategies and leading a team of staff to diversify and expand PNNL’s national security research and development activities. She was also Director for the Computational and Statistical Analytics Division, Director of the Data-Intensive Computing research initiative, and led the focus area for developing a computational and bioinformatics portfolio. She also was the project lead for the Extensible Computational Chemistry Environment (Ecce), a key capability in the Molecular Sciences Software Suite—DOE’s flagship computational chemistry suite which has been deployed worldwide, and for which she received an R&D 100 Award and a Federal Laboratory Consortium Award.

Deb was recognized by DOE with a Certificate of Accomplishment for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM) and won the DOE Outstanding Woman in Engineering award. Deb is an executive member of the Brookhaven Science Associates Board of Directors at Brookhaven National Laboratory and a Senior Member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers. She has served on the IEEE Information Systems Strategy Council and the NIST Smart Grid Advisory Board. She is on the executive advisory board for the College of Engineering and Architecture and the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University. She was on the board of directors and served a three-year term as president of the Tri-County Partners chapter of Habitat for Humanity.

Deb received her M.S. and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University.