It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of Lucy Nowell on June 14, 2020. Lucy was a key contributor to NITRD, as a former co-chair to the High End Computing Interagency Working Group, an alternate representative for the NITRD Subcommittee, and an active participant to two other IWGs – Big Data and Human Computer Interaction and Information Management.
She made important contributions to the field of computer science during her work at NSF and DOE. She was a Chief/Staff Scientist at the U.S. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and progressed to a Program Director at NSF, where she managed research for supercomputing systems in the Office of Cyberinfrastructure. Following NSF, Lucy continued to work on supercomputing systems at the DOE’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research until she retired in 2018. Lucy had a dynamic career path, in that she began in theatre arts, but later in life shifted her focus and completed her Ph.D. in computer science at Virginia Tech. Please take a look at Lucy’s accomplishments, which were noted in her interview on the Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering alumni webpage.
We at NITRD offer our condolences to Lucy’s family.