Laboratory physicist Dmitri Ryutov was awarded the American Physical Society’s James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics. He was cited “for many outstanding contributions to the theoretical plasma physics of low and high energy density plasmas, open and closed magnetic configurations, and laboratory and astrophysical systems.” The recognized work was conducted during Ryutov’s 22-year career at Livermore and, prior to that, at Russia’s Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics.
The prize, established in 1975 in honor of Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, is sponsored by General Atomics and recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of plasma physics. Recipients are given $10,000 and a certificate citing their contributions.
Ryutov recently retired from the Laboratory but continues a close connection as a visiting science professional. He is a theoretical physicist with interests in plasma physics and its applications, the environmental aspects of energy production, space and astrophysical plasmas, x-ray optics, and advanced dynamics.
The 26th International Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing, one of the world’s premier computer science conferences, recognized Lawrence Livermore researcher Edgar A. Leon and his collaborators Bo Li and Kirk Cameron from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with the Karsten Schwan Best Paper Award for their modeling work on parallel performance.
The paper—“COS: A Parallel Performance Model for Dynamic Variations in Processor Speed, Memory Speed and Thread Concurrency”—describes an analytical model of computational performance called compute–overlap–stall (COS), which accurately captures the combined effects of dynamic variations posed by different operating modes on execution time. Understanding these effects may play a key role in helping future high-performance systems meet the challenging demands of parallel scientific applications.
Livermore atmospheric scientist Ben Santer was selected as a fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). AMS fellows must have made “outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their applications during a substantial number of years.” Santer’s research focuses on topics such as climate model evaluation, statistical methods in climate science, and identification of natural and anthropogenic “fingerprints” in observed climate records. His early research on the climatic effects of combined changes in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols contributed to the historic “discernible human influence” conclusion of the 1995 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In recognition of his outstanding leadership and service to the nation, Victor H. Reis was named the third recipient of the John S. Foster Jr. Medal. Established by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, and bestowed annually by the Laboratory director, the medal recognizes exceptional leadership in scientific, technical, and engineering development and policy formulation in support of U.S. nuclear security.
After the U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing in 1992, Reis was among the first to recognize the need for a new, formal program to maintain the U.S. nuclear stockpile with data from supercomputer simulation and multiscale experiments.
From 1993 to 1999, Reis served as assistant secretary for Defense Programs in the Department of Energy, where he developed the Stockpile Stewardship Program and its associated Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, now the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program.