Dr. David McDaniel began his career serving in the US Air Force conducting flight tests to assess the stability and control characteristics of various military bomber aircraft. He later taught aerodynamics and thermodynamics at the US Air Force Academy where he first entered into the world of computational aerodynamics and high-performance computing applications.  He worked as a researcher in the Aeronautics Lab at the Academy for several years developing computational techniques for parallel simulations of various multidisciplinary problems.  He continued with this activity as one of the founding developers of the Kestrel fixed-wing product of the CREATE effort managed by the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP).  Dr. McDaniel has been a member of the research faculty at the University of Alabama, Birmingham for many years as part of the CREATE team, eventually serving as the Kestrel Principal Developer, the CREATE-Air Vehicles Project Manager, and currently as the HPCMP Associate Director for CREATE where he oversees the development and support of an array of professional software products and other HPCMP initiatives focused on critical DoD acquisition and mission engineering applications.  He is a graduate of the US Air Force Academy, The George Washington University, and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.