STE Highlights 2020
Science, Technology & Engineering Highlights feature awards and noteworthy scientific achievements at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
! Click on an issue date to see the Science Highlight headlines and link to the articles.
Jan. 2020
- Brown receives Distinguished Alumni Award
- Cerreta selected as 2020 VP of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
- Next-gen accelerator design: First-ever U.S. C-band RF test facility under commissioning
- Advances in aerial payload vessels: Spherical aerogel shells hold vacuum
- Quantum Annealer Eigensolver: A revolutionary approach to a real eigenvalue problem
- Optoelectronic advances: Tunable perovskite materials prompt next-gen light sources
- MCNP enhancement improves simulation efficiency up to 1,000 times
Feb. 2020
- Steinzig honored as American Society of Mechanical Engineers fellow
- Lebensohn selected as TMS 2020 speaker
- Enhancement in nuclear material container corrosion assessment receives Aoki Award
- Zero-knowledge proofs securely verify neural networks
- First portable liquid nerve agent detector developed at Los Alamos
- First sialic acid comparison across bird species lays groundwork for disease knowledge
- Kozimor lends expertise for special f-element chelation issue of Inorganic Chemistry
- Advances in predictive CO2 sequestration: A robust and general framework
- OrganiCam: Most sensitive bio-organic survey tool could search for life on Mars
- Improved contaminant estimates in inertial confinement fusion
March 2020
- Understanding “persister cells” pushes frontiers of infectious disease management
- The greenhouse that supports our nation: From biofuel to environmental research
- New class of switchable explosive could revolutionize explosive safety
- First restartable rocket motor to maneuver satellites in space
- Proposal call: Los Alamos cutting-edge research to combat COVID-19
- Determination of neutron star radii enhances understanding of densest matter in the cosmos
- Seaborg Institute rapid response call for actinide science
- Functional data analysis applied to new weapons physics tools
April 2020
- Langendorf and Wurden selected for ARPA-E awards
- Myers selected as American Statistical Association (ASA) Fellow
- Pilania recognized as Rising Star
- New ultra-high-throughput capability for biocatalyst screening
- LANL-developed catalyst complexes now available through Strem Chemicals, Inc.
- First model to couple extreme space weather events to power grid infrastructure
- Los Alamos partners with Sweden for new spent-fuel NDA method
- New inertial confinement fusion measurement: Neutron imaging diagnostic is a first
- Defect engineering: A first for tuning molecular crystal properties
- Groundbreaking actinide research: The discovery of unique metal–ligand bonding
- LANL releases novel open-source software for environmental and ecosystem-based applications
May 2020
- LANL teams place in ARPA-E Grid Optimization Competition
- Cincio wins first place in IBM Quantum Challenge
- New quantum dots for toxic-element-free, next-gen solar cells
- Protecting the global food chain: Best predictions of El Niño impacts
- Los Alamos exascale-class computing cooling infrastructure certified
- Accurate simulations boost nanomaterial understanding
- Another D-Wave advantage: High-quality solutions to tricky combinatorial optimization problems
June 2020
- Hoffman wins DOE Early Career Research Award
- Maginot elected to American Nuclear Society’s Executive Board
- AGU recognizes Stauffer for excellence in refereeing
- Researchers identify chemical signatures using the Earth’s magnetic field
- Los Alamos software discovers new world-record lightning flashes
- Special issue of Nuclear Technology journal dedicated to KRUSTY test
- Metal halide perovskites: Out of the lab, into the consumer market
- Enhancing gate-based quantum computing methods with hybrid algorithms
- New electrochemical hydrogen contamination detector enables widespread use of clean energy
July 2020
- Ning Xu selected Fellow of the American Chemical Society
- New in situ data extraction and visualization capability
- Researchers begin thermal testing for storing high-level nuclear waste in salt formations
- Two new research labs open at Los Alamos
- Researchers contribute to understanding of microstructure effects on strength of additively manufactured stainless steel
- New algorithm for special nuclear material detection at border crossings
- LANL releases open-source data remapping software Portage 2.2
August 2020
- Burns receives ACS Francis P. Garvan‒John M. Olin Medal
- Lebensohn and team win Additive Manufacturing Modeling Challenge
- MOSAiC team honored with DOE Service Award
- El-Atwani and Uberuaga recognized as Outstanding Reviewers for the Acta Journals
- Historical data leads to better modeling for radioactive gas seepage from underground nuclear tests
- LANL partners with Eideticom to bring computational storage processor to the market
- 3D model will enable remote design for new Crossroads supercomputer
- Experimental demonstration of advanced photonic systems leads to boosted performance
- New record for highest pressures ever achieved in laboratory equation-of-state measurements
- Fine-tuning light harvesting antenna for improved photosynthesis boosts algae biomass three-fold
- Quantum Computing Summer School goes virtual for the first time
- New parallel programming system, Legion, for the exascale
September 2020
- Harvey honored as American Society for Nondestructive Testing Fellow
- Two capability enhancements bolster experiments at LANSCE
- A new quantum chemistry algorithm for LANL’s D-Wave quantum annealer
- Breakthrough on recompaction of spall damage on second shock
- Wang co-edits special Materials issue: Helium effects on materials in extreme environments
- New details on the nature of thermal interfaces in dynamic compression experiments
- Laboratory Directed Research and Development Early Career Research Proposal Call
- First-ever high-performance MgO ceramic substrate via tape casting
October 2020
- LANL-developed surfactants win two technology awards
- First epigenetic manipulation of biofuel algae boosts performance factors
- Novel technique leads to record-high quantum dot doping
- Improving climate system understanding through submicron aerosol data
- From a Mott insulator to an ideal two-dimensional metal
- Rare experiment leads to discovery of new material defect mechanism
- Foundational research for emerging class of materials: oxysulfide perovskites
- Los Alamos scientists author key chapters for Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment design
- ICF advancement: First observation of scale invariance in the high-energy-density regime
November 2020
- Morreale named vice chair of APS Four Corners Section
- Graduate student Danielle Schaper first-ever LANL recipient of APS4CS Lustig Award
- Americium isotope advances for quality control standards and commercial use
- Progress in fission product diagnostics for post-detonation nuclear forensics
- QUIC-Fire is first laptop-capable wildfire management software
- BSL-2 Lab in Chemical Microscopy Facility expands
- First connection between a specific phase transition and superconductivity
- Modeling predicts the role of grain boundary structure in materials in extreme environments
- Integrated approach accelerates nuclear fuel development and qualification
- Detailed mapping of HIV ‘sugar shield’ could aid vaccine design
- New boundaries established for sea-ice models
- High-explosives R&D Crystal Lab relocation and renovation complete
December 2020
- LANL scientist and collaborator honored by mineral name
- Novel adaptive machine-learning approach improves reproduction of internal 3D structure
- Microbial interactions, not individual microorganisms, essential to carbon cycling in soil
- LANL-developed system offers better, faster, safer decontamination of surfaces
- Novel thermal neutron detector safeguards aircraft and HPC semiconductor electronics
- Experimental technique offers decades worth of corrosion data in one minute
- New ICF platform and high-res imaging provide groundwork for direct drive multi-shell targets
- Novel “fast-forwarding” quantum algorithm makes quantum computing more useful right now