ICDS has brought on three new co-hires across diverse disciplines. From left are Radu Roiban, professor of physics in the Eberly College of Science, Xi Gong, associate professor of biobehavioral health in the College of Health and Human Development; and Carlos Blanco, assistant professor of physics in the Eberly College of Science.
Three co-hires join Institute for Computational and Data Sciences
Posted on March 25, 2025UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) brought on three new-co-hires Radu Roiban, professor of physics in the Eberly College of Science; Xi Gong, associate professor of biobehavioral health in the College of Health and Human Development; and Carlos Blanco, assistant professor of physics in the Eberly College of Science.
“This latest cohort of co-hires strengthens ICDS’ research in artificial intelligence and machine learning,” Guido Cervone, ICDS interim director, said. “Alongside other colleagues already in ICDS, they form the bulk of the faculty of the AI research hub.”
Gong and Blanco started their Penn State careers in January, and Roiban, who has worked at Penn State for almost 20 years, was brought on as a co-hire in the fall of 2024.
Radu Roiban, professor of physics in the Eberly College of Science
Roiban’s research spans quantum field theory, gravitational physics and string theory.
Since its inception, particle scattering has been an engine behind the developments of quantum theory, Roiban said.
Roiban’s research leverages particle scattering to explore fundamental interactions and structures that emerge in both classical and quantum domains. His approach relies on observable quantities, such as the right angle in which particles scatter after collisions, or the electromagnetic and gravitational waves produced during such events or interactions. An important aspect of his current research is that it integrates tools from theoretical high-energy physics for applications in gravitational wave science.
“The same interactions that govern collisions of particles, also governs situations where particles move around one another — like the moon going around the Earth — a configuration known as a bound state,” Roiban said. “We use particle scattering to learn about these interactions and to make predictions about the physics of these bound states.”
His work builds towards the goal that quantum field theory tools will advance the theoretical computation of gravitational wave observations. His new line of research will apply both classical and modern quantum theory techniques to tackle new challenges, impact an important experimental frontier, and uncover rich theoretical structures that could drive the development of innovative tools.
Roiban plans to use ICDS compute resources in the future to assist with his extensive analytic and numerical calculations.
“The calculations aren’t easy; they take time — both human time and computer time,” Roiban said.
Xi Gong, associate professor of biobehavioral health in the College of Health and Human Development
The focus of Gong’s research is on geospatial data science, which he describes as a “combination of geographical information science (GIScience), computer science, mathematical and statistical science.”
“I try to use the increasing volume of geospatial big data to direct my discoveries,” he said.
Gong, with a background in geography and GIScience , aims to investigate environmental health issues, as well as other complex human and social dynamics.
In his research, Gong focuses on two main topics: environmental health science (EHS), which addresses public concerns regarding various environmental risk factors that can affect human health like air pollution, water contamination and nuclear radiation, and spatially integrated social science (SISS), which uses social sensing big data to explore social behaviors and designs spatiotemporal data mining algorithms and visual analytics methods to reveal hidden patterns in big data.
His current research focuses on wildfire-related pollution and how that is affecting cancer outcomes in the southwest.
Gong not only plans to use ICDS resources to support his large-scale geospatial modeling, real-time computation, and the streamlining and harvesting of large data sets, he is also looking forward to exploring interdisciplinary collaboration amongst other co-hires.
Carlos Blanco, assistant professor of physics in the Eberly College of Science
Blanco’s work is focused on finding physics beyond the standard model of physics, in particular, detecting signatures of dark matter.
“Dark matter comprises 80% of all of the matter of the universe and we know almost nothing about it,” he said.
In his research, he looks for dark matter by proposing novel direct detection techniques that can be carried out in a laboratory. He also searches for indirect signatures in astrophysical objects from nearby planets to far away galaxies.
Blanco is currently working to find new materials that could be sensitive to dark matter interactions. He is also studying high-energy astrophysical signals for evidence of new particles that might constitute dark matter.
He plans to use ICDS resources to perform particle propagation calculations — simulating how high-energy particles propagate through the universe and its contents — as well as materials modeling and machine learning to predict totally new materials in order to look for direct signals. Blanco is looking forward to creating multi-institutional collaborations and working toward the discovery of dark matter.
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