Awards

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has awarded John Nasstrom, Lawrence Livermore’s chief scientist for the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center, with the NNSA Administrator’s Distinguished Service Gold Award. Nasstrom was recognized for his service to U.S. national security, particularly in the areas of atmospheric dispersion modeling and incident response. In part, Nasstrom’s award citation reads, “For leadership, technical excellence, and impact in the efforts of the Office of Nuclear Incident Response to manage the consequences associated with the release of hazardous material into the atmosphere and mitigate the nuclear threat.”

Research scientist Paul Durack from Livermore’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison has been awarded the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) 2018 Data Prize for his leadership of the input4MIPs (input data sets for Model Intercomparison Projects), which began in 2016. The prestigious WCRP prize is awarded annually by the prize committee, which consists of representatives from the Global Climate Observing System, Atmospheric Observation Panel for Climate, Terrestrial Observation Panel for Climate, and the Ocean Observations Physics and Climate Panel, for an outstanding contribution to data product generation, data management, data preservation, data monitoring, and other data-relevant activities by an early- to mid-career researcher. Durack received the award for his strong professional portfolio and the outstanding quality of his contributions to the development of documented climate data sets.

Lawrence Livermore and three Laboratory employees—Charity Follet, Candice Gellner, and Quentin Vaughan—have garnered the “Best in Class” Award from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Technology Transfer Working Group (TTWG) for their innovation in partnering to develop the four-institution Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine, or ATOM, consortium. The goal of the ATOM consortium, which includes Lawrence Livermore, the pharmaceutical firm GSK, the National Cancer Institute’s Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, and the University of California at San Francisco, is to create a new paradigm of drug discovery that would reduce the time from an identified drug target to clinical candidate from the typical six years to one year. The TTWG awards, which were inaugurated this past year, are selected by a team of representatives from the national laboratories and the DOE Office of Technology Transitions.

The online high-performance computing (HPC) news publication HPCwire has named Lawrence Livermore’s Lori Diachin, the Computing Directorate’s deputy associate director for science and technology, as one of its “People to Watch” in 2019. The honor recognizes key people who are likely to propel the HPC industry forward in the coming year. Diachin was one of 12 people honored by the publication.

Over the past 16 years at the Laboratory, Diachin has held several leadership roles including the director for the Center for Applied Scientific Computing and director for the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) HPC4Manufacturing and HPC4Materials programs. In 2018, Diachin took over the role of deputy director for DOE’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP), which involves 15 DOE laboratories, numerous university partners, and more than 1,000 researchers. Her primary focus over the next year will be preparing for a critical ECP review that will set the technical baselines for the remainder of the project.