Irene Qualters, most recently with the National Science Foundation (NSF), has been selected as associate laboratory director for simulation and computing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, incoming lab manager Triad National Security said Tuesday.
In her new role, Qualters will be “responsible for high performance computing, theory, and simulation in support of the NNSA and other programs,” a Triad spokesperson said by email.
The NNSA’s roughly $700-million-a-year, complex-wide Advanced Simulation and Computing program helps weapons scientists model “the extraordinary complexity of nuclear weapons systems [and] is essential to maintaining confidence in the performance of our aging stockpile without underground testing,” the agency wrote in its 2019 budget request.
Qualters was lately senior science adviser in the office of the assistant director for computer and information science and engineering at the NSF, according to a May press release. She joined the independent federal agency, based in Alexandria, Va., in 2009 as program director for high-performance computing in the cyber infrastructure office.
Prior to joining NSF, Qualters spent 30 years in various management roles in the private sector, including about 20 years with Cray Research: a computing company founded in 1971 in Chippewa Falls, Wis., and which in 1975 delivered the Cray-1 supercomputer to Los Alamos. Cray-1 cost around $40 million, in 2018 dollars, based on figures provided by Cray.
At Cray, Qualters “was a pioneer in the development of high performance parallel processing technologies to accelerate scientific discovery,” Triad said in a short biography posted on its website Tuesday.
Qualters’ other private sector employers included pharmaceutical giant Merck, of Kenilworth, N.J., where she was vice president for information systems, according to her LinkedIn bio. She did not return a phone message left at her NSF office on Tuesday.
The National Nuclear Security Administration on June 8 awarded Triad a Los Alamos National Laboratory management and operations contract worth more than $20 billion over 10 years, with options. The five-year base period starting Nov. 1 is worth about $10 billion, and the deal allows for up to $50 million in annual fees.
