Awards

Five teams of Livermore researchers and one individual were honored with Defense Programs Awards of Excellence from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The awards honored work performed in 2018 that was critical to ensuring the safety, security, and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear deterrent.

The Methuselah Team received the award for developing a simple method for ameliorating the aging process in existing systems and delaying it in future life-extension programs (LEPs). The Compton Radiography Team developed and demonstrated an experimental capability at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), which produced the first-ever time-resolved Compton radiograph of an inertial confinement fusion implosion. In honor of exceptional support to an effort known as the 50+10 Study, an Integrated Project Team, consisting of personnel from NNSA, Lawrence Livermore, and Y12, received the award for a series of tests they performed from FY16 through FY18 that leveraged NNSA’s planned dismantlement of secondaries at the Y12 facility.

Joseph Kilkenny was recognized for his exceptional contributions to the Stockpile Stewardship Program through his leadership of NNSA’s National Diagnostics Initiative (NDI) over the last six years. NDI has led to revolutionary advances in the ability to diagnose the behavior of matter at NNSA’s three high-energy-density (HED) experimental facilities. The LEP Assessment of Replacement Materials Team used NIF to deliver HED data that enables LEP assessment of replacement material options. These experiments are a continuation of previous HED platform development efforts designed to measure material equation-of-state (EOS) data for a wide range of pressure regimes. In recognition of its contributions to producing a detailed next-generation plutonium (Pu) EOS model for stockpile applications, the Pu EOS Team also garnered this prestigious award. The model included new ab initio calculations to constrain the Pu EOS in areas previously lacking such constraints and also incorporated new high-pressure Pu data.

Lawrence Livermore employees Genaro Mempin, Patrick Dempsey, and Chris Spadaccini received a 2019 “Best in Class” National Technology Transfer Award from the Department of Energy’s Technology Transfer Working Group (TTWG) for their efforts to create the Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory (AML). The award was presented in the category of economic development.

Located in the unclassified research area of the Livermore Valley Open Campus, the 14,000-square-foot AML enables Lawrence Livermore to expand collaborative research partnerships with industry, nearby Sandia National Laboratories/California, universities, student researchers, and local businesses. To date, several partnerships have been established with companies in the energy, security, and manufacturing fields.

Inaugurated in 2018, the TTWG awards recognize technology transfer professionals in five categories—intellectual property management, licensing, partnering, economic development, and innovative lab facilities. This year’s award marks the second straight year that the Laboratory has won a TTWG “Best in Class” honor.