David H. Ackley is a professor and computer scientist. He is an Emeritus Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico. He explores living computation, the principle that living systems and computational systems are ultimately the same things. His primary research impacts have been in neural networks and machine learning, evolutionary algorithms and artificial life, and biological approaches to computer security and computer architecture. He is developing robust-first computing on indefinitely scalable computer architectures, to achieve not only greater computational power but also a credible basis for security that moves beyond deterministic execution and belief in the existence of The Last Bug.

Ackley earned his Bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics from Tufts University. He went on to earn a Master's degree and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University . His dissertation focused on high-dimensional hypercube optimization.

After receiving his doctorate's degree, Dave Ackley Bell Communications Research (now known as Telcordia Technologies). He served as a member of their technical staff until 1994.

In 1994, he transitioned to academia and became an Computer Science professor at the University of New Mexico.