Dona Crawford, MS

"A career is a marathon... focus on the two or three most important priorities at any given time."

Dona L. Crawford served as the Associate Director of Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) before retiring in 2016 to lead the establishment of the Livermore Lab Foundation.  

In her role at the Lab, Crawford led foundational and innovative high performance computing efforts on the world’s most powerful supercomputers.  Her team of more than 1000 individuals provided mission-driven data science, and complex modeling, simulation, and analysis in support of the nation’s most pressing needs.  Prior to her position at LLNL she served in leadership roles at Sandia National Laboratories for more than 25 years. 

During her time at LLNL she was Co-Chair of the Council on Competitiveness High Performance Computing Advisory Committee, Co-Chair of the CRDF Global Board and earlier, at Sandia, chair of the 1997 US Supercomputing Conference.  She also served on advisory committees for the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council, and joined the California Council on Science and Technology in 2014.

In addition to her current duties as chair for LLF, Ms. Crawford participates on study committees for the National Academy of Sciences, and is a member of the board of directors for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the Krell Institute, the Strategic Research Advisory Board at the University of Oklahoma, and the Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center. 

She holds a master’s degree in operations research from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Redlands, California. Crawford was named the 2005 Woman of the Year in Science in Alameda County and received the Computerworld Honors Award in 2006. In November 2010, she was featured as one of insideHPC’s “Rock Stars of HPC.” Her undergraduate alma mater, presented her with the “Alumni Career Achievement Award” in 2012. She is the first woman to be recognized as an ‘HPCwire People to Watch’ in 2002, and the only woman who made the list twice, again in 2013. In her free time, fostering education, protecting the environment, and giving back to the community remain her primary focus.