Pradeep Ramuhalli

Bio

Pradeep Ramuhalli is a Distinguished R&D Staff Member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division where he leads the Modern Nuclear Instrumentation and Controls group. Prior to joining ORNL, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and was previously a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University, East Lansing. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Iowa State University, Ames, in 2002. 

Dr. Pradeep Ramuhalli has been working on research and development in the general area of AI-assisted systems automation, resilience and reliability for over 20 years, with research at the intersection of measurement science, data science, and decision science. He has developed sensors and AI-based algorithms for continuous online monitoring and diagnosis; physics-informed machine learning algorithms for virtual sensing and prognostic assessment of system and component health; and integrating risk-informed methodologies with AI solutions to assure reliability of measurements and resilience of systems. His research has led to the development of risk-informed digital twins for advanced nuclear power systems and is currently leading research on developing the technical bases for AI-assisted analysis of nondestructive evaluation data from in-service inspections. The results of his research are enabling development and application of digital twins and related digitalization technologies for power generation systems (conventional and advanced nuclear power, hydropower, and renewables), leading to life extension, operations and maintenance practice optimization, and economic operation of power plants; increasing cyber-physical resilience of systems; addressing measurement and analysis needs for international safeguards, and other national security applications. The results of his research have enabled development and application of digital twins and related digitalization technologies for nuclear facilities; improved material characterization through the incorporation of advanced sensors and AI-assisted analytics; increased cyber-physical resilience of systems; and are addressing measurement and analysis for international safeguards. Leveraging multiple technical areas (such as sensors, integrated system health monitoring, prognostics, inverse problems, multisensor data fusion, numerical methods, and image/signal processing), his current research is focused on developing sensors and algorithms for continuous online monitoring and diagnosis; physics-informed machine learning algorithms for virtual sensing and prognostic assessment of system and component health and in particular, passive components in nuclear power; and risk-informed methodologies to assure reliability of measurements and resilience of systems. He has also investigated innovative sensors for structural health monitoring (SHM) and is currently leading studies evaluating AI/ML for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and SHM applications. He is the PI on multiple projects that are focused on the development, testing, and deployment of technologies for optimizing inspection, monitoring and operations of complex systems and facilities. He co-edited a book on integrated vision and imaging techniques for industrial inspection and has authored or co-authored 4 book chapters, over 175 technical publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences (including over 40 peer-reviewed journal publications), and over 100 technical research reports.

Dr. Ramuhalli is actively involved in the technical community. He is an elected member of the ANS Human Factors, Instrumentation and Control Division (HFICD) Executive Committee (2018-2025) and was General Chair of the ANS 2021 Topical Meeting on Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technologies (NPICHMIT). He is the General Co-Chair for the AI for Robust Engineering and Science (AIRES) workshop series and was the General Chair for the 2025 Electromagnetic Nondestructive Evaluation (ENDE) conference. Previously, he was an elected member of the governing board (Administrative Committee) of the IEEE Reliability Society for a three-year term (2014-2016), and for 2016, was elected to the IEEE Reliability Society Executive Committee. He served as the Technical Chair for several ANS and IEEE sponsored international conferences and was a member of the organizing committee (with various responsibilities) for other conferences. He was past chair of IEEE technical committee on resilient cyber-systems, and past chair of the Richland chapter of the IEEE Sensors Council. He has also served on IEEE, ISA, ASME, ANS, and ASTM Standards working groups focused on developing standards and recommended practices for AI, online monitoring, and prognostic health management. Dr. Ramuhalli is a senior member of IEEE, and a member of ANS, and was inducted into the IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) honor society in 2015.

Research Interests

Reliability and resilience engineering, Nuclear instrumentation and control, Nondestructive evaluation/system health monitoring, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), Prognostics Health Management (PHM), Pattern recognition and Neural Networks, Inverse problems, Signal and Image Processing, Information fusion and distributed signal processing, Computational methods for electromagnetics and acoustics

Selected Recent Professional Activities and Service

Professional Experience

• Group Lead, Modern Nuclear Instrumentation and Controls Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, 2022- Present
• Distinguished R&D Staff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, 2019- Present
• Senior Research Scientist/Engineer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, 2009-2019
• Adjunct Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, Jun. 2009- May 2011
• Assistant Professor: Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, Aug. 2003-Jun. 2009
• ASEE Faculty Fellow, Air Force Research Laboratory, Dayton, OH, Summer 2008
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, Jan. 2002-Aug. 2003

Awards

• Elected member of ANS HFICD Division Executive Committee (various leadership roles)    2018-2025
• Elected Member of Executive Committee and Administrative Committee, IEEE Reliability Society                                                                                                                                         2013-2016
• Awarded Applied Physics Group Core Value Award for Collaboration                                    2015
• Inducted into IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) Honor Society, Eta Chapter                           2015
• Awarded Engineer of the Year by IEEE Richland Section Sensors Chapter                            2015
• Winner of Best Paper Prize at IEEE Int’l. Conf. on Homeland Security Tech. (HST2013)      2013

Education

• B.Tech. (Electronics and Communication Engineering). J.N.T. University, India (1995)
• M.S. (Electrical Engineering). Iowa State University (1998)
• Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering). Iowa State University (2002)
• Post-Doctoral Research Associate. Electrical and Computer Eng., Michigan State University (2002-2003)

Professional Service

• General Chair, AI for Robust Engineering and Science (AIRES 4, and AIRES 5) Workshops 2023, 2024

• General Chair for 12^th ANS NPIC-HMIT Conference                                                                    2021

• Member, ISA-67 Standards Committee, and Working Group for updating ISA-RP67.04 (ISA Recommended Practice: Methodologies for the determination of setpoints for nuclear safety-related instrumentation).

• Member, ASTM Working Group 73289 (New guide for in-situ monitoring of metal additively manufactured aerospace parts).

• Member, Working Group for IEEE Standard P-1856-2017 (IEEE Standard Framework for Prognostics and Health Management of Electronic Systems)

• Technical Co-Chair for the ANS NPIC-HMIT Conference 2019.

• Keynote Speaker, NDE2017 Conference (Chennai, India), December 2017 

• Organized short course in “Damage Prognostics” at World Federation of NDE Centers meeting (July 2015) 

  • Invited leaders in modeling, sensing, and measurement technologies to present tutorials at short course

  • Presented tutorial on Prognostic Algorithms. 

• Steering Committee member, IEEE International Workshop on Cyber Resilience Economics (CRE 2016; in conjunction with the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security 2016)

• Guest Editor, International Journal on Prognostics Health Management (Special Issue on “PHM for Nuclear Power Applications”, published in 2015)

• Co-edited volume on “Integrated Imaging and Vision Techniques for Industrial Inspection”, (published by Springer in September 2015).

Professional Affiliations

• Senior Member, IEEE
• Member, ANS
• Member, IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (Eta Chapter)

Publications