Steven Ashby

2016 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award

Since April 2015, Steven Ashby has been establishing the vision and setting the strategic direction for the Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL), a U.S. Department of Energy facility in Richland, WA, engaged in energy, environment, and national security research. In all, Ashby has worked at PNNL for eight years, where he also managed the lab’s $80 million research portfolio along with the technology commercialization, government relations, and research integrity functions.

Earlier in his career, Ashby worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he managed the 500-person Computing Applications and Research Department. During his more than 20-year tenure at LLNL, he also helped found the Center for Applied Scientific Computing, which is now one of the world’s premier scientific computing research organizations.

An expert in polynomial iterative methods, Ashby is widely recognized as a leader in computational science—a discipline that he has worked to advance throughout his career. His research has focused on large-scale scientific simulation with applications to electromagnetics and subsurface flow and transport, numerical linear algebra, massively parallel computing, and applied computer and data sciences.

Ashby is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences.