Barbara Helland

Barbara Helland

Barbara Helland is the Associate Director of the Office of Science’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program. In addition to her Associate Director duties, she leads the development of the Department’s Exascale Computing Initiative to deliver a capable Exascale system by 2021. She has also served as the Executive Director of the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium since its March 2020 inception.

Ms. Helland previously served as ASCR’s Facilities Division Director where she was responsible for opening ASCR’s facilities to national researchers − including those in industry − through the expansion of the Department’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program.

Prior to DOE, Ms. Helland developed and managed computational science educational programs at Krell Institute. She also spent 25 years at Ames Laboratory working closely with nuclear physicists and physical chemists to develop real-time operating systems and software tools to automate experimental data collection and analysis − and in the deployment and management of lab-wide computational resources.

Ms. Helland received B.S. in Computer Science and a M.Ed in Organizational Learning and Human Resource Development from Iowa State University. In recognition for her work on the Exascale Computing Initiative and with the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, Ms. Helland was named to the 2021 Agile 50 list of the world’s 50 most influential people navigating disruption.