The Professional Achievement Award recognizes those SLU-Madrid alumni who exemplify the mission of Saint Louis University in their daily lives. They have achieved outstanding success in their professional fields, bringing credit to the University and benefit to their communities. This award honors alumni who graduated from 2001 to 2011.
2023 Honoree
Alberto Palomo ('04 B.S.)
After graduating in 2004 with a B.S. in Physics from Saint Louis University, Alberto completed postgraduate studies at Cambridge and Edinburgh, and obtained his Ph.D. in Supergravity Physics at the Spanish National Research Council (UAM/CSIC).
He then held a short postdoctoral fellowship, where he recognized the broad and far-reaching opportunity that managing and capitalizing on data implies for both economic and social impact. He then spent a year at Huawei's R+D lab in Toronto, developing numerical simulations for the acceleration of neural networks, the backbone of today's AI breakthroughs. For the next five years, he led the technical development of Big Data Analytics applications for a large U.S. electric utility company in the northeast.
Two years ago, he was appointed chief data officer for the government of Spain, in charge of designing and deploying a national-level horizontal data infrastructure encompassing both public administrations and key industrial sectors. The Spanish National Data Office has since prescribed an architectural and governance reference model for data-driven digital transformation, promoting innovative paradigms of trustworthy cloud services.
These also back European digital sovereignty efforts, aligning with his current role as chairman of the Governmental Advisory Board to Gaia-X, a negotiation and supervisory forum serving to harmonize data public-policy agendas with the union's industrial activities.