Rose Rocchio

Rose Rocchio is the Director of the Mobile and Web Research and Accessibility Department in UCLA's Office of Advanced Research Computing (OARC).  Her portfolio is focused on Research Technology, Mobile, Cloud, Data and Accessibility.

Rose has played an increasingly significant role as a named Investigator on federal grants (NSF, NIH, VA) in collaboration with researchers from the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSEIS), The School of Dentistry, The Medical Imaging and Informatics Department and with multiple locations within the VA Greater Health Care System in CA and PA.

OARC’s Mobile and Web Strategy Department is comprised of three technical teams: A Research Mobile Technology Team specializing in data collection and delivering custom cross platform native apps for complex research projects, a Research Data and Web Platform team specializing in data set manipulation and management, and a Disabilities Computing Program (DCP) Team specializing in accessibility.

Rose has worked in the mobile research space for fifteen years, since the early days of the iPhone 4, circa 2010.   She has deep technical experience and expertise in architecting and leading large research teams developing and implementing complex sensor driven integration projects with mobile apps that deliver Just-In-Time-Adaptive-Interventions (JITAIs).  She has worked with mHealth projects that deliver interventions based upon medicine delivery sensors, such as inhalers and toothbrushes, as well as projects that use gamification to drive user engagement with apps. Rose has implemented mobile apps that allow users to set personalized goals and track their progress, deliver scheduled lottery events, create social support environment, aggregate activities into a friendly leader board and more. Rose has also worked with teams integrating reinforcement algorithms into intervention systems, to optimize user interaction in Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs). Under Rose’s direction, the mobile team at UCLA has leveraged their mobile skillsets to create a series of mobile platform functionality and environments that support mobile research data collection, push notifications and data interaction analytics. Integrations with Redcap, Firebase, and many other APIs enhance UCLA’s grant proposal viability.

Rose participates in the UC-wide Research IT Committee (RITC) to collaborate with peer UC Research technologists. Rose also participates in the UC wide Redcap committee, to collaborate on efforts to integrate with this research data environment. Additionally, she participates on the UC Wide ETLC committee as the Accessibility Liaison.  

Rose has been passionate about leveraging AI for the good of humankind her entire career. From the early 1990s she was enthusiastic about AI’s possibilities when she worked on a team that built an early display for the Coastguard Search and Rescue system called AMVER. GenAI today, is enhancing day to day work productivity as well as decreasing the time it takes to solve complex problems.  Rose believes that AI, leveraged ethically and inclusively, for the good of all, holds much promise for the future.