Des Pilkington

Des Pilkington is the acting director for Strategy and Planning. In this role, Pilkington is responsible for a wide variety of Director’s Office functions, including the Laboratory’s strategy and annual Lab plans, budget and analysis planning, systems analysis and coordination of the mission focus areas (MFAs) and objectives and key results (OKRs).

Previously, Pilkington served as principal deputy principal associate director for Weapons and Complex Integration (WCI). He holds more than 40 years of experience in the nuclear weapon design field — serving in previous leadership roles in both primary and secondary design programs. He also held roles as the program director for WCI’s Weapon Physics and Design Program and division leader for WCI’s Design Physics Division. Pilkington served on assignment to the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in England, where he served as head of the High-Performance Computing (HPC) Department and was responsible for their HPC strategy, development and delivery.

Pilkington received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and his master’s degree in astrophysics, both from London University. He served more than 20 years in various code development and management roles at AWE before joining LLNL in 2001.