Biographical Information
David Nelson, Interagency Working Group on IT R&D
Dr. David B. Nelson is Director of the National Coordination Office for information Technology R&D. He is responsible for the coordination of planning, budget and assessment activities for the Federal Networking and Information Technology R&D Program (www.nitrd.gov). In this position Dr. Nelson is on loan to the White House from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. At NASA he was Deputy Chief Information Officer; his prime responsibilities included agency-wide cyber-security, technical computing and enterprise architecture.
He previously served as Associate Director of the Office of Energy Research in the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE.) In this position he was Chief of Staff for Energy Research and directed the Office of Computational and Technology Research, whose research programs included mathematics, computer and computational science, and advanced technology. Dr. Nelson joined the Department of Energy from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where he was a research scientist working mainly in theoretical plasma physics and its applications to fusion energy. He also worked in environmental and defense research, where he led a group studying the effects of nuclear electromagnetic pulse.
He received his A.B. cum laude from Harvard University , majoring in engineering sciences. His graduate education was primarily at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University , where he received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, both in mathematics. He received additional graduate training in physics at Columbia University and the University of Tennessee.