David Kratzer

Former CEO, The Supercomputing Challenge

David Kratzer is an expert computer scientist who earned his master’s and bachelor’s degree in computer science from California Polytechnic State University even before the introduction of the personal computer. Since then, he has been involved with high performance computing and teaching computer science. Kratzer worked on the high performance consulting team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), helping LANL’s scientists use supercomputers effectively. He recently retired as chief executive officer and former program manager for 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. He also served as an adjunct professor at Harding University, teaching math and computer science classes.