David Stern - Director

Mr. Stern is the founder and former CEO of Research Systems Inc, the software company that developed IDL a popular software package for scientific applications, including astronomy, high energy physics, and medical imaging.
 
Stern attended Union College in Schenectady, NY and received his BA in Economics from the University of Colorado in 1969. He worked at the University from 1969 to 1977 at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, LASP, where he developed software for NASA's interplanetary probes notably Mariner Mars 7 and 9.
 
In 1977 he founded Research Systems Inc. in Boulder, to develop a scientific programming language for data analysis and scientific visualization called IDL. IDL plays an important role in the data reduction, processing and analysis activities for a number of major projects including the Hubble Space Telescope and is widely used in the fields of satellite imagery, medical imaging and automotive engineering.  Research Systems was sold in 2000 to the Eastman Kodak Co, and is now known as ITT Visual Information Solutions.
 
He was named the Esprit Entrepreneur of the Year by the Boulder County Chamber of Commerce in 1997, and received an honorary doctorate (ScD) from the University of Colorado in 2000.
 
He is now the president of Algolytics, Inc, a small software consulting company he founded in 2002, and serves on the Arizona Astronomy Board.