Douglas B. Kothe

Exascale Computing Project Director

Douglas B. Kothe, director of DOE's Exascale Computing Project (ECP), has more than three decades of experience in conducting and leading applied R&D in computational applications designed to simulate complex physical phenomena in the energy, defense, and manufacturing sectors. Previously ORNL's Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for Computing and Computational Sciences, Dr. Kothe has also served as Director of the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors, DOE’s first Energy Innovation Hub (2010-2015), and as Director of Science at the National Center for Computational Sciences (2006-2010).

Before joining ORNL in 2005, Dr. Kothe spent 20 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he held a number of technical and line and program management positions, with a common theme being the development and application of modeling and simulation technologies targeting multi-physics phenomena characterized in part by the presence of compressible or incompressible interfacial fluid flow. He also spent a year at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the late 1980s as a physicist in defense sciences.

Dr. Kothe earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Missouri–Columbia and an M.S. and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Purdue University.