Awards
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The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Office selected Brandon Wood and Tadashi Ogitsu for the 2020 Technical Program Area Award in Hydrogen Fuel R&D. The award recognized the computational materials science team for their exceptional support to the HydroGEN Advanced Water Splitting Materials and Hydrogen Materials Advanced Research Consortium efforts. Each year, the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office presents one award within each of the four primary program areas to recognize outstanding contributions and extraordinary technical achievements.
Ogitsu and Wood lead the materials modeling teams across two multi-laboratory consortia, leveraging the advanced simulation capabilities and leadership-class computing facilities at Livermore. According to the official DOE award announcement, the team’s work was cited for “understanding interactions at interfaces and coupling models of chemical and physical processes across time and length-scales, from atomistic to bulk, is not only advancing the state of the art in computational materials science, but also guiding experimental efforts in developing advanced, high-performance materials for hydrogen production through water splitting and hydrogen storage.”
As the COVID-19 pandemic surged and concern emerged over a nationwide shortage of ventilators, Livermore researchers began designing a durable, portable mechanical ventilator. In just over three months, Livermore and industry partner BioMedInnovations, LLC (BMI) of North Carolina designed, produced, and tested an easily reproducible design prototype, netting an Outstanding Partnership FLC Award. The Laboratory ventilator effort was led by mechanical engineer Jack Kotovsky and includes mechanical engineers Austin Nye, Patrick Scholl, Matt Pharr, Ken Enstrom, Ian Ladner, and Dan Manha; mechanical technologists Aaron Sperry, Greg Norton, and Victor Vargas; electrical engineers Doug Modlin, Jack Dean, and Brian Wihl; physicists Jacob Trueblood and Phil Paul; biomedical engineers David Soscia, Michael Triplett, and Jeremy Gleick; chemical engineer Allison Yorita; precision engineer Steven Guzorek; administrator Shaine Athey; and Patrick Dempsey, the director of strategic partnerships and communications for Engineering.
