David (Dave) Edward Deifer, associate director of Information Systems & Computing at Penn, died on January 7, 2026 from complications of throat cancer treatment. He was 63.

Born near Seoul, South Korea, and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Mr. Deifer graduated from William Allen High School and eventually landed in Philadelphia. He initially worked as a fish cutter and teppanyaki chef while earning a certification in aerospace engineering. “He could flip a shrimp into your pocket with one hand and solder a circuit board with the other,” said his family in an online tribute. 

In 1989, Mr. Deifer joined Information Systems & Computing at Penn as a technician. Over the course of a 35-year tenure at Penn, he became a technical manager, a network engineer, a senior project leader, and eventually an associate director. 

Mr. Deifer became involved in several facets of Penn life: In 1996, he was one of the founding members of the Kelly Writers House, a volunteer-driven space that aimed to equalize access to the arts. Concurrently, he co-founded and was editor-in-chief of XConnect (pronounced “Cross Connect”), one of the earliest digital literary magazines. Housed in and ultimately endowed by the Kelly Writers House, XConnect became the first digital magazine to make the leap to print, and these print editions appeared nationally in independent bookstores and major retailers for 12 years. XConnect gained the enthusiastic support of Penn’s English faculty, and Mr. Deifer gave several talks at Kelly Writers House about online publishing (Almanac September 10, 1996). 

His creative pursuits as a writer and poet grew during his time at Penn. In 1997, Mr. Deifer was part of a group of more than a dozen poets who were the first to participate in a Saturday night reading at Kelly Writers House that was broadcast live on WXPN (Almanac March 4, 1997). 

In 2012, Mr. Deifer began taking photos during his walks around Philadelphia, and in 2017, these photos were featured in an exhibition, Departures: Relevance of In Between, at the Burrison Gallery in Penn’s University Club (January AT PENN 2017). 

Mr. Deifer is survived by his wife, Annette Earling; his son, Calvin; his daughter, Marylee (Tim); his father, Paul; his twin brother, Richard; his sister, Lee Anne (Brad); his grandson, Kieran, and many nieces and nephews. 

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to support young artists at the Kelly Writers House: https://writing.upenn.edu/wh/.