Matt Edwards, a longtime Laboratory employee and lieutenant colonel in the California Army National Guard, was recently honored with the prestigious Legion of Merit (LOM), the sixth highest military award, from the U.S. Armed Forces. He received the LOM for his “exceptionally meritorious service as the Regional Defense Counsel, Pacific Region, Army National Guard Trial Defense Service from February 1, 2011, to December 31, 2013. As the inaugural Regional Defense Counsel representing military personnel charged with misconduct, Edwards built the Pacific Region into a singular powerhouse of defense advocacy and litigation … and created the first and only Army Reserve National Guard Defense Appellate Division in the nation.”
Seven Lawrence Livermore employees—Chris Krenn, Errett Hobbs, James Stölken, Linda Stuart, Mehul Patel, Ashley Bahney, and Rebecca Nikolic—have received National Security Affairs (NSA) certificates from the Bush School of Government and Public Administration at Texas A&M University. The employees completed the yearlong program, which includes a five-week intensive residence course in College Station, Texas. The NSA certificate program is administered by the Bush School in cooperation with the Laboratory’s Office of University Relations and Science Education. Sixty Livermore employees have graduated from the program since its inception in 2008.
Livermore physicist Tammy Ma has won the American Physical Society’s 2016 Thomas H. Stix Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Plasma Physics Research. Ma was recognized for “innovation and leadership in quantifying hydrodynamic instability mix in inertial confinement fusion implosions on the National Ignition Facility and for key contributions to experiments demonstrating fusion fuel gains exceeding unity.” The award, established in 2013, annually honors an individual who has made outstanding theoretical, experimental, computational, or technical contributions in plasma physics early in his or her career. Ma was also recently awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.
Lawrence Fellow Aurora Pribram-Jones is one of two recipients of the Howes Scholar award presented by the Department of Energy (DOE) Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Program. The award honors Fredrick Anthony Howes, who managed the DOE Applied Mathematical Science Program in the 1990s. Each year, a recent graduate of the DOE program is selected for the award based on demonstrated scientific achievement, leadership, and service. Pribram-Jones uses mathematics to computationally predict the properties of matter, with an emphasis on potential functional theory, linear response for thermal ensembles, and mathematical conditions on finite-temperature exchange-correlation functionals.
Laboratory employee Craig Wuest has received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service, one of the top civilian awards presented by the Department of Defense (DOD). The award cites Wuest’s work to strengthen DOD’s nuclear survivability posture and his role as executive secretary for the Defense Science Board Task Force on Deterring, Preventing, and Responding to the Threat or Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Wuest worked for three and a half years as a senior scientific adviser to DOD’s assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs.
The Laboratory received a 2016 Environmental Stewardship Award in the Sustainable Communications category from DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Four initiatives by Livermore’s Sustainability Performance Program—the Green Hotline and Environmental Safety and Health Newsletter, compost and recycling program in the cafeterias, employee electric vehicle program, and Bike to Work Day—received the award, which recognizes successful and innovative communication and marketing strategies that promote sustainability goals and best practices.