Irene Qualters serves as the Associate Laboratory Director for Simulation and Computation.

She previously served as a Senior Science Advisor in the Computing and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF), where she contributes to strategic leadership in new directions for the CISE Directorate.

In her nearly nine years at NSF, she has had responsibility for developing NSF’s vision and portfolio of investments in high performance computing, and has played a leadership role in interagency, industry, and academic engagements to advance computing.

Irene also served on the Science and Technology Committee of the LLNS/LANS Board of Governors.

Prior to her NSF career, Irene had a distinguished 30-year career in industry, with a number of executive leadership positions in research and development in the technology sector.

During her 20 years at Cray Research, she was a pioneer in the development of high performance parallel processing technologies to accelerate scientific discovery. Subsequently as Vice President, she led Information Systems for Merck Research Labs, focusing on international cyberinfrastructure to advance all phases of pharmaceutical R&D.

Irene has a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Detroit and a B.S. from Duquesne University.