David Carlson Receives the 2025 Kerr Award
for Excellence in Research
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (April 2025) — David Carlson is the recipient of the 2025 Julie B. Kerr
Award for Excellence in Research. The award is named in honor of a former researcher in IDA’s
Center for Communications Research in La Jolla, California. It is given to an employee who has
demonstrated research excellence and exceptional achievement in the IDA research
community.
Dave has been on the research staff of the IDA Center for Computing Science since 1986. His
greatest contributions have underpinned one particular cryptanalytic field. He is a prolific
contributor to the scientific literature of this field, having more than 60 internal research
publications along with numerous internal conference papers.
Beyond producing papers and theory, Dave is an implementer. He has spent the majority of his
career embedded in the sponsor space, transitioning his research immediately into operational
gains in the production environment. He is directly responsible for millions of operational
successes in his area, and his contributions to the theory and practice are so fundamental that
their indirect impact can be observed in nearly all of the operational successes in the field.
Beyond his personal achievements, Dave has excelled as a mentor, leader and colleague in the
technical community. He formally led concentrated research efforts. Dave is also noted for
implementing into production the best ideas. His intent is always to further the mission,
regardless of the source of the innovation, and he is a model for excellence in research, mission
impact and sponsor engagement.
IDA is a nonprofit corporation that operates three federally funded research and development
centers in the public interest. IDA answers the most challenging U.S. security and science policy
questions with objective analysis leveraging extraordinary scientific, technical and analytic
expertise.
