Claire Max, a longtime astrophysicist at Livermore and a faculty member at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), has earned the Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation from the American Astronomical Society for her work in adaptive optics (AO). The award is bestowed to an individual for the design, invention, or significant improvement of instrumentation leading to advances in astronomy.
Max received the award for coinventing sodium laser guide star adaptive optics and for shepherding AO from its roots in classified space surveillance to a prominent, essential technology on large telescopes. Her leadership has made near-diffraction-limited imaging possible on large ground-based telescopes, thus opening new fields of discovery. Her work on laser guide stars has resulted in an ongoing revolution in ground-based astronomy. Max led a group that built the AO system and sodium laser guide star for Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton in California and designed the laser beacon and AO system for the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii in collaboration with Keck Observatory staff. She also was instrumental in creating the newly formed Center for Adaptive Optics headquartered at UCSC.
Max joined the Laboratory in 1974 as part of a new group formed to understand the plasma physics of laser fusion. In the 1980s, she became the founding director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, a position she held for nearly a decade. She also was the first female member of the elite JASON group of scientific advisers to the Department of Defense.
Edgar A. Leon, a computer scientist in the Livermore Computing Division, was named a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Leon has spent his career helping develop increasingly powerful high-performance computing (HPC) systems. He was involved in preparing the Laboratory for the Sequoia supercomputer and is now laying the groundwork for the Sierra supercomputer, scheduled for delivery in 2017. Leon’s pioneering contributions include a mechanism to simulate novel computer architectures in large systems and the application of “cache injection” to HPC. His research at Livermore is part of a larger effort to develop and leverage exascale-computing capabilities to ensure the nation’s global leadership in HPC. In particular, Leon works on performance and reliability of communication libraries at scale, emerging memory technologies for exascale systems, power-aware computing strategies, and resilience of future systems.
IEEE is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence. Only 7 percent of IEEE members attain the level of senior member, which requires 10-plus years of professional experience and significant contributions, achievements, publications, and course development or technical direction in IEEE-designated fields.
The Ultrascale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT) system, developed by Lawrence Livermore and nine partners, has netted the team the Interagency Partnership Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC). A nationwide network of federal laboratories, FLC provides a forum to develop strategies and opportunities for linking the laboratory mission technologies and expertise with the marketplace.
UV-CDAT integrates more than 70 disparate scientific software packages and libraries for large-scale data analysis and visualization and serves as a valuable tool for the climate community. The UV-CDAT team consists of Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge national laboratories; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Space Flight Center; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory; New York University; the University of Utah; Kitware, Inc.; and Tech-X Corporation.
Natalia Zaitseva, a Lawrence Livermore physicist, was inducted into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame in March. One of 12 new inductees, Zaitseva was recognized for her work in science, technology, and engineering.
While working on her Ph.D. at Moscow State University, Zaitseva developed a method for growing extremely large crystals faster than ever before, demonstrating that crystals from solution could be grown 10 to 100 times faster than by traditional methods. She perfected the process after arriving at Livermore in 1993. This work has been important for the National Ignition Facility and has potential applications in national security, energy, and basic research. The Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame was established in October 1993 to recognize outstanding women in the county for their achievements and contributions to the county and its citizens.
Felicie Albert, an experimental physicist at Lawrence Livermore, was selected by the American Physical Society (APS) as an Outstanding Referee for 2015. Outstanding Referees are honored for their exceptional helpfulness in assessing manuscripts for publication in the Physical Review journals.
Albert is one of 142 referees being recognized in 2015. This year’s selection was made from 30 years of records on more than 65,000 referees who have been called upon to review manuscripts, including more than 37,800 that were submitted in 2014. The basis for selection includes the quality, number, and timeliness of referee reports, without regard for membership in the APS, country of origin, or field of research.
Albert, an expert in ultrafast x-ray sources and laser–plasma interactions, has worked on the Laboratory’s laser-Compton light source technology and currently works on the development of betatron x-ray sources for high-energy-density science at the Laboratory’s Jupiter Laser Facility and National Ignition Facility (NIF) and SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source as well as for other NIF and Photon Science Principal Directorate programs.