NREL Welcomes Robert Leland as Leader of New Scientific Computing and Energy Analysis Division

Dec. 29, 2017 | Contact media relations

Robert Leland joined NREL in early December as the new associate lab director for Scientific Computing and Energy Analysis.

Formerly Vice President of Science and Technology and Chief Technology Officer of Sandia National Laboratories, Leland is the first associate lab director for Scientific Computing and Energy Analysis (SCEA). The recently created SCEA directorate combined elements of two other divisions within NREL. Leland will steward NREL’s capabilities in high-performance computing, computational science, applied mathematics, visualization, data, and also its capabilities in analysis of energy systems, technologies, policies, resources and markets.

Leland earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Oxford University in 1989. He joined Sandia the following year and co-authored Chaco, a software toolkit used to optimize the performance of supercomputers. With the exception of two notable postings in Washington, D.C., Leland has spent his career at Sandia. He was chosen to be a White House fellow in 1995 and served as a key adviser to modernize the IT infrastructure and business practices at the Internal Revenue Service. He returned to the White House in 2014 to lead the development of the National Strategic Computing Initiative, a new national vision, strategy, and roadmap for high-performance computing.

Leland also holds a master’s degree from Oxford in mathematical modeling and numerical analysis, and a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University in electrical engineering and systems science.