Guido Zarrella

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning offer countless opportunities as well as urgent ethical and policy questions. Guido Zarrella, technical fellow for AI, leads our decision science research, exploring how to integrate and transform data into insights, decisions, and anticipatory intelligence.

He oversees innovation initiatives into trustworthy AI, machine-assisted sensemaking, and AI-enabled planning tools to improve our collective security, health, economy, and ecology.

Zarrella joined MITRE in 2001 with a degree in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and launched a distinguished research career studying neural networks, language processing, and the applications of advanced information processing technologies. Zarrella is also the executive director of the Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering. This non-profit academic consortium supports international research to bring the organizing principles of neural cognition into machine intelligence and uses lessons and technology from AI to understand how brains work.

In recent years Zarrella has managed and mentored a portfolio of hundreds of researchers to accelerate the impacts of AI-enabled technology through MITRE’s federally funded research and development centers. From 2011 to 2019, he was principal investigator of a dozen diverse research teams spanning topics like Deep Learning for Language Understanding, Mapping Influence and Deception Online, Machine Vision at 1 MHz, AI on the International Space Station, Neuromorphic Intelligence in Extreme Environments, Creative Machines, Quantum Machine Learning, and Self-supervised AI in Electronic Health.

Recently, he organized academic community events including the Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop, the NASA Frontier Development Lab topic on Astronaut Health, and the AI in Humanitarian Assistance & Disaster Response workshop.