LUMINARY BIO
David Kratzer earned his master’s degree in computer science before the introduction of the personal computer. He has been involved with high performance computing and teaching computer science for many years. Kratzer works on the High Performance Consulting Team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He helps LANL’s scientists use supercomputers effectively. He also manages LANL's participation in the Supercomputing Challenge, a program where elementary, middle school and high school students come up with a computational science project and work on it all year long. The Challenge is both a competition and a learning community.
FUN FACTS
- One of Kratzer’s daughters held a state record in weight lifting for her age group when she was in high school.
- The Supercomputing Challenge has seen an increase in female participation from 26–41 percent between 1990 and 2015.
- The first so-called supercomputer that Challenge students used in 1990 was a Cray XMP—today's mobile phones have more power than that machine had.
