Prasanna Balaprakash

Prasanna Balaprakash is co-founder and CEO of PrimaLabs, where he leads the development of workload-aware AI inference systems that improve performance, reliability, energy efficiency, and cost for production AI applications. Previously, he was Director of AI Programs and a Distinguished R&D Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he co-led an AI initiative focused on secure, trustworthy, and efficient AI for scientific discovery, experimental facilities, and national security. He also served as the AI lead for several U.S. Department of Energy projects. Before joining Oak Ridge, Prasanna held multiple research and leadership positions at Argonne National Laboratory, progressing from postdoctoral researcher to R&D Group Leader in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division, with a joint appointment at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. Earlier in his career, he served as Chief Technology Officer at Mentis SA in Brussels. His work spans artificial intelligence, machine learning, optimization, GPU systems, benchmarking, and high-performance computing. He received the DOE Early Career Award in 2018 and earned his PhD from the CoDE-IRIDIA AI Lab at Université Libre de Bruxelles, supported by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and F.R.S.-FNRS fellowships.