Lab to celebrate its science
The Laboratory will showcase its latest scientific and technological accomplishments
for employees, Department of Energy dignitaries and invited guests during
a special "Science Day," scheduled for Wednesday, March 21.
"We are looking forward to this event as a great opportunity to highlight
our scientific and technological achievements with invited guests and
our employees," said Jeff Wadsworth, deputy director for Science
and Technology.
"This day is really about science and technology. It’s an opportunity
to celebrate the great science and technology we do here at the Lab,"
added Rokaya Al-Ayat, director of the Laboratory Science and Technology
Office. We hope that all employees will take this opportunity to see first-hand
some of the great S&T being conducted in the rest of the Laboratory."
The day will include presentations by Laboratory scientists as well as
talks by Gen. John Gordon, administrator of the National Nuclear Security
Administration; James Decker, acting director of the DOE Office of Science;
Lab Director Bruce Tarter; and Wadsworth. A poster session will also be
available. The poster session presents an opportunity for one-on-one interactions
and will include a spectrum of posters, video displays and demonstrations
of hardware and instrumentation representing all Laboratory programs and
directorates.
Al-Ayat emphasized that Science Day is for LLNL scientists and engineers.
"Employees are invited to participate in the poster session, to host
someone they collaborate with at another institution who would be interested
in what we do here, or to attend the event. I hope employees will be actively
involved in the day."
All of the talks will be given in the Bldg. 123 auditorium and will be
broadcast live on Lab TV once the auditorium is full, Al-Ayat said. The
poster session, which will feature 30-40 posters, will be on display nearby.
The theme of the formal presentations is "Scientific Supercomputing
— Meeting the Next Decade’s National Challenges via Integration
of Theory, Experiments and Large Scale Simulation." Selected topics
include computational turbulence, climate and weather prediction, seismic
modeling, and computational biology, among others.
"We wanted to find a theme that would include as many people and
as much research as possible. Given that we have one of the largest computers
right now, we chose supercomputing," Al-Ayat said. "The talks
will be given on representative topics that show the power of supercomputing
at the Lab. We wanted to capture the broad range of the Lab’s work."
The idea for Science Day was developed last year in discussions with Gen.
Gordon and Millie Dresselhaus, MIT professor and former director of the
DOE Office of Science, as a way to showcase and celebrate the science
and technology at DOE labs.
The DOE national security laboratories were scheduled first with Sandia
National Laboratories holding its Science Day in December; Los Alamos
National Laboratory is scheduled to hold its event on Feb. 13. Similar
Science Day events will be scheduled at other DOE laboratories in the
coming months.
To plan this event, a committee is in place representing all Laboratory
directorates and disciplines. For more information, for the name of your
directorate representative or to offer suggestions about the day, contact
Tracey Barnes at the Laboratory Science and Technology Office, 2-5214
or
barnes22 [at] llnl.gov (
barnes22[at]llnl[dot]gov
)
. A Website
is under development, which will have the program and agenda (as they
develop) and allow for input and/or comments regarding Science
Day.