Octo Consulting Names Rob Albritton AI CoE Senior Director; Mehul Sanghani, Sujey Edward Quoted

Octo Consulting has appointed Rob Albritton, an award-winning artificial intelligence and machine learning leader, as senior director of the company’s AI Center of Excellence, Octo announced on Tuesday.

“Octo is serious about AI,” said CEO Mehul Sanghani. “It is transforming the way our customers in the Federal Government do business. When we met Rob, we knew he would push the boundaries of what is technically possible with this emerging technology. We’re confident that with Rob at the helm of our AI Center of Excellence, Octo will successfully guide our government customers through their AI journeys.”

In his new position, Albritton will guide and shape Octo’s AI capability and offerings, set long-term AI strategy and vision and develop the company’s AI Center of Excellence through its research and development center, oLabs.

Octo’s Chief Technology Officer Sujey Edward said, “Rob’s diverse technical and business leadership background attracted us to him. He’s not only built cutting edge emerging technology prototypes for military and industry, but he also knows how to transition those prototypes to operational users and the tactical edge. Rob thinks differently and approaches problems in very creative ways.”

Prior to joining Octo, Albritton served as lead machine learning (ML) engineer at MITRE. In the role, he developed ML solutions in support of national security. He also advised on trusted AI innovation and adoption to Department of Defense (DoD) and intelligence community (IC) senior leaders.

At NVIDIA, he served in two roles during his tenure. As manager of DoD Intelligence, Albritton worked with graphics processing units (GPU) to solve complex problems in computer science. He has worked with engines for simulating human imagination to Hollywood films. NVIDIA’s GPU now simulates human intelligence and acts as the brain of computers.

As senior AI developer relations manager with NVIDIA, Albritton was a technology mentor and focal point for the Geospatial Intelligence community. 

A U.S. service branch veteran, Albritton served at the Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) for seven years, holding a variety of leadership positions. In his role of research geospatial engineer, he was a trusted advisor to the Office of the Technical Director. 

Albritton also implemented agile software development processes to develop cutting edge open source geospatial intelligence and tactical mission planning tools in support of special operations forces and other special mission organizations.

As director of the Army Geospatial Enterprise Governance Board, Albritton helped review the latest efforts to tackle geospatial interoperability and the development of a network enabled geospatial enterprise and ensured geospatial integration within Army policies, regulations, Joint doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities.

He holds an M.S. from the National Intelligence University, an MBA from the UVA Darden School of Business, a B.S. from the University of Maryland, and certification in Foreign Denial and Deception. 

Albritton has received the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center Award for Achievement in Technology Transfer; Counter Improvised Explosive Device Technology Award; Department of the Army Commander’s Award for Civilian Service; and Support to U.S. Special Operations Command and Joint Personnel Recovery Agency Award.

“I’m ecstatic to lead Octo’s AI Center of Excellence,” said Albritton. “Octo’s culture embraces people who think differently. We’re all technology and organizational change agents. We aren’t just creating hypothetical solutions. We’re building a world class AI research and development facility where top technical talent can come do their life’s work innovating unconventional AI solutions for the U.S. Federal Government.”

About Octo

Octo challenges the status quo, empowering federal agencies to leap IT hurdles by using emerging technologies to create transformative solutions that enable rapid modernization, enhance citizen engagement, and maximize human impact. We continually explore ways to transform IT, producing results vital to national security, intelligence, health care, and more.

Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Octo is a technology firm dedicated to solving the Federal Government’s most complex challenges with Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Agile DevSecOps, Cloud Engineering, Open Source, Cybersecurity, and Data Science solutions. Octo enables the government to modernize faster and meet the needs of rapidly changing missions with agility. Our approach is collaborative, and our outcomes are superior.