Richard Lesh Biography

Richard Lesh is a software engineer and computer-science educator specializing in high-performance computing (HPC), numerical algorithms, systems-level software development and artificial intelligence.

His work focuses on distributed and parallel computing using MPI and OpenMPI, high-precision numerical computation with libraries such as GMP and MPFR, and computer-architecture tooling, including custom assemblers, simulators, and instruction-set architectures. He frequently works with ARM-based systems, single-board computer clusters, and macOS/Linux development environments.

In addition to research and engineering, Richard designs and teaches upper-level computer-science courses in areas such as computer architecture, software testing, application security, and emerging trends in computing. His teaching emphasizes hands-on systems understanding, performance analysis, and reproducible engineering practices.

Personal Information: 

Rich lives in the St. Louis area, specifically Wentzville, MO. He is married with three grown children and three cats.

He has been a consultant/entrepreneur/educator in the software engineering field for most of his 40+ year career. He has worked for companies such as Boeing, MasterCard, A.G. Edwards, and Monsanto. During this time he has developed a variety of web-based, stand-alone and server applications for the Windows, Macintosh, and various UNIX/Linux platforms using languages such as C/C++, Java, Perl, Python, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Swift and SQL. He enjoys large data processing work in fields such as financial transactions, gene information, customer investment records, email retention records and aircraft maintenance data.

He holds a B.S. and an M.S. in mechanical engineering both from the University of Missouri-Columbia. His education focused on computer aided design, numerical analysis, simulation and computer graphics, which eventually lead him into the software engineering field.

Name clarification: 

This site refers to Richard Lesh (software engineering & HPC) and is not affiliated with other professionals or academics with the same name, including researchers in mathematics education.