Women @ Energy: Dr. Rebecca Springmeyer

Rebecca Springmeyer serves as Division Leader for Livermore Computing and Principal Investigator for Next Generation Architectures and Software Development in the Advanced Simulation and Computing program. She is also the Director of LLNL’s Multiprogrammatic & Institutional Computing Program. Becky manages the Livermore Computing workforce and coordinates activities to deliver High Performance Computing systems, software, and services. Becky has more than 30 years of experience as a computer scientist in management and technical roles at LLNL. She has built and led teams, overseen the procurement and integration of hardware, and designed and developed software tools. Outside the lab and during her graduate school years, Becky has taught computer science courses at Mills College and studied at the University of Stuttgart and their HPC center in Germany. Becky has a B.A. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Ohio Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, Davis. She minored in journalism and finds that a communications background can be very useful in computer science work.

I always loved math in school and I discovered computer science in college, so I decided on a double major. Our student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery went on field trips to companies, such as the local Bell Labs branch. This inspired me to go on to graduate school and then to work at a national lab as a computer scientist. 

Working with the people at the DOE national labs has been one of the best things about my career.  As a computer scientist I have worked with scientists from many different and exciting areas in additional to computer scientists with many R&D specialties. I enjoy working on efforts that have a large impact and that involve innovative technology and really bright colleagues.  

Over the years I have often volunteered for Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Math, an organization that encourages young people to pursue studies and careers in STEM. Our lab helps host the annual Expanding Your Horizons conference and we also host science field trips from local schools, we support a Science on Saturday program for local students, and we engage in other educational outreach programs like Girls Who Code. In recent years, we’ve begun sending a considerable contingent of women and allies to the Grace Hopper Celebration.

I think a good way to encourage greater diversity in STEM is to invite a more diverse set of students at all ages to visit labs and technical companies and then hire them into intern positions when they are still in high school and college. This can provide a pipeline of more diverse students, and it can give young women and other underrepresented groups experience in STEM and motivation to continue with their science education. This efforts need to start well before college because by then many young women have decided that STEM is not for them.

Get experience as early as possible, to see whether you have a strong interest in the work and to expand your network. Internships are great opportunities for this. Find mentors and be sure to talk to all of the people around you about your field and their work. In college it's good to minor in additional subjects of value in a computer science career. Computer scientists who have also studied one of the sciences are in high demand in scientific computing.

I love to read, write, cook, and spend time with my kids. The latter is getting more challenging as two of the three attend out-of-state universities.  We also like to visit national and state parks and go hiking and camping.

Learn more about our programs & resources for women and girls in STEM at /women