"ASCI is helping us shift from test-based nuclear weapons certification to simulation-based certification," says Crawford. "This requires tremendous advances in code development, material and physics models, verification and validation, and the underlying hardware and software infrastructure to be able to run the resulting codes and understand the output. The ADAPT program is focused on developing and deploying new information and manufacturing technologies that will revolutionize the way we realize nuclear weapon products."

Crawford began her career at Sandia as a mathematician in 1976, having obtained her B.S. in mathematics from Redlands University in 1973. "I majored in math because it was fun, and hired on at Sandia as a numerical analyst," she says. "In developing algorithms and writing pre-mixed flame propagation code and non-linear least-squares fit subroutines, I got closer and closer to the computer. Finally, I just couldn't resist modifying the operating system!"

Crawford moved on to several staff and management positions at SNL dealing with operating systems, computing and information infrastructure, hardware servers, visual comprehension, software environments, and engineering applications. In 1978, she earned her M.S. in operations research from Stanford University. She became director of SNL's Model Based Design and Manufacturing Integration Program in 1998.

One of Crawford's most significant career contributions was consolidating SNL's two supercomputer centers in 1993 into one, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "As part of that effort we developed a new laboratory strength in wide-area networking," she says. "This led to additional responsibilities for Sandia, enabling the lab to utilize distributed computing to help the nuclear weapons complex operate in an enterprise-wide manner."

Highly active in the high-performance computing community, Crawford is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and was one of the founders of the InfoTEST (previously the National Information Infrastructure Testbed [NIIT]). She is involved in the annual Supercomputing (SC) conferences, and was chair of SC97. She serves on several advisory committees for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Research Council (NRC) and participates in community outreach activities to promote math and science.

A member of the CRPC External Advisory Committee since 1998, Crawford says, "Each of the CRPC member institutions is individually strong. Through ASCI, Sandia works closely with three of these institutions. The great strength of the CRPC is that collectively the members can increase the rate at which the U.S. makes progress in parallel computation. This is critical for the future of science and engineering."