Rob Neely is an LLNL Computing employee with over 25 years of experience in High Performance Computing (HPC) and scientific software development. Rob is the Program Coordinator for Computing Environments in the Weapons Simulation and Computing (WSC) Program, as well as the Associate Division Leader for the Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC). In those roles, he works to bridge the mission-critical applications, the CS and math research community, and Livermore Computing to help ensure LLNL's continued leadership in HPC. He leads the WSC Research Coordination Council that manages a portfolio of promising research, the Sierra Center of Excellence which worked with IBM and NVIDIA in a 5 year project to prepare our applications for the heterogenous GPU-based Sierra system (#2 in the world as of 2018), and several other smaller projects.

Since 2015, Rob has also been involved in the US Exascale Computing Project, currently serving as the Software Technologies L3 lead for Software Ecosystem and Delivery. In this role, he's working with a team of people to ensure that the software created and delivered as part of the ECP is broadly available and robust, and that the ECP will be used to drive long-term improvements to how open source scientific software is developed within DOE.

Rob has been at LLNL since 1994. Much of his career has been spent in the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program where he has been deeply involved in a breadth of areas, including strategic planning, computational research directions, software quality assurance, and workforce management. Earlier in his career, he helped lead several large software applicatoin projects – most notably as the computer science technical lead for the ALE3D (multi-physics simulation) and LEOS (materials equation of state) projects. During his time as a software developer, he spearheaded several other successful projects, including the MIDAS material science project, and Lorenz – a tool for making HPC easier and more accessible to users of Livermore Computing.

In 2010-2011, Rob took a one-year assignment in Washington DC where he worked at the non-profit Council on Competitiveness. While there, he helped establish a new public-private partnership called the National Digital Engineering and Manufacturing Consortium, aimed at increasing adoption of HPC in the small and medium sized manufacturing sector. He also helped re-launch the Council’s HPC Initiative, with its goals to continue advocating for the adoption of HPC in the industrial sector.