Telly Awards honor two LLNL videos

The 44th Annual Telly Awards honored Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) with five awards for two videos that helped announce the Lab’s Dec. 5, 2022, fusion ignition achievement and visualize how experiments happen at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). LLNL’s Technical Information Department (TID) and the Office of Strategic Communications collaborated on the winning projects...

Energy Inks wins regional FLC award

A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)-developed technology known as Energy Inks has won a best in region award for the Far West region from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC).            This is the technology’s second award in the past nine months, as it received an R&D 100 award last September as one of the top 100 industrial inventions in the world...

Lab engineer shares in DOE project award for work on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) engineer and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are among those sharing a Department of Energy (DOE) award for their roles in building the world’s newest observatory. The DOE honor, the 2021 project management achievement award, was recently presented for work done on the Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera (LSSTCam), part of the...

Four Lab postdocs selected to attend the 72nd annual Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting

Four Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) postdoctoral appointees have been selected to attend the 72nd annual Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting in Germany this summer thanks to the University of California President’s 2023 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Fellows Program. The four selected to attend are Wonjin Choi, Sean Leonard, Sijia Huang and Sarah Sandholtz. The Lindau Nobel...

Regional leaders honor fusion ignition team for game-changing innovation

A collective of regional business and civic leaders in the Tri-Valley has honored the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) fusion ignition team for their “game-changing” breakthrough. The Innovation Tri-Valley (ITV) Leadership Group presented its 2023 #GameChangers Awards to eight innovative companies from the region in a ceremony on March 29 at Goal Line Studios in...

Computing codes, simulations helped make ignition possible

Part 6 in a series of articles describing the elements of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's fusion breakthrough. For Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) physicist George Zimmerman, and for the hundreds of physicists, computer scientists and code developers who have worked on fusion for decades, computer simulations have been inexorably tied to the quest for ignition. Ha...

Alison Christopherson, Art Pak elected NAS Kavli fellows

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) staff scientists Alison Christopherson and Art Pak have been elected Kavli fellows of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS). As new Kavli fellows, they participated in NAS’ annual Kavli Frontiers of Science U.S. symposium, which brings together outstanding young scientists to discuss exciting advances and opportunities in a broad range...

#YourPlaceInSpace: LLNL planetary defender promotes career opportunities in the federal space workforce

Planetary defense physicist Megan Bruck Syal on Wednesday represented Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) at “Space STEM Task Force Pathways to the Federal Space Workforce,” an outreach event hosted by the National Science Foundation. Multiple federal government agencies came together in a virtual interactive session to provide information for students, early-career professionals...

LLNL’s Kamath honored as 2023 SIAM fellow

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), the world’s premier professional organization for applied mathematicians and computational scientists, has selected Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory research staff member Chandrika Kamath as a member of the SIAM fellows class of 2023.   The prestigious fellow designation is a lifetime honorific title and honors SIAM members...

NIF’s optics meet the demands of increased laser energy

Part 5 in a series of articles describing the elements of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's fusion breakthrough. If Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) were a race car, it would run at the redline most of the time. “NIF is the only laser system that intentionally operates above the laser damage growth threshold,” said Tayyab Suratwala...

LLNL scientists develop model for more efficient simulations of protein interactions linked to cancer

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have developed a theoretical model for more efficient molecular-level simulations of cell membranes and their lipid-protein interactions, part of a multi-institutional effort to better understand the behavior of cancer-causing membrane proteins. Developed under an ongoing collaboration by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National...

Laser focused: Power and finesse drove fusion ignition success

Fourth in a series of articles describing the elements of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's fusion breakthrough. To achieve fusion ignition on Dec. 5, 2022, the National Ignition Facility (NIF)’s laser system needed to operate flawlessly at both ends of the performance spectrum, delivering immense energies while controlling the energy balance across all 192 laser beams with...

National Academies release report on high energy density science with LLNL contributions

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report, Fundamental Research in High Energy Density Science, which identifies key challenges and science questions for the field of High Energy Density (HED) science for the coming decade and proposes ways to address them. The report follows a year-and-a-half-long consensus study by a committee of 13 experts with...

Computational Engineering is key to ignition success

In a room illuminated by blinking lights and glowing monitors, more than 2,000 synchronized computers are triggered to run 5 million lines of code. The intricate code language is responsible for aligning and firing 192 laser beams — and carrying some 800 channels of target diagnostic data — efficiently and reliably several times a day. This isn’t a scene from a science fiction movie: it’s the...

Prototype telescope designed by Lawrence Livermore researchers launched to the International Space Station

A prototype telescope designed and built by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers has been launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to the International Space Station (ISS). Known as the Stellar Occultation Hypertemporal Imaging Payload (SOHIP), the telescope uses LLNL patented-monolithic optics technology on a gimbal to observe and measure atmospheric gravity waves and...

Breaking it down, carbon nanotube style

When it comes to studying particles in motion, experimentalists have followed a 100-year-old theory that claims the microscopic motion of a particle is determined by random collisions with molecules of the surrounding medium, regardless of the macroscopic forces that drive that motion. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

First-ever hybrid Women in Data Science Livermore event celebrates achievements, supports women in the field

Celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) women data scientists, Lab employees and other attendees interested in the field gathered at the Livermore Valley Open Campus for the annual Livermore Women in Data Science (WiDS) regional event held in conjunction with the global WiDS conference. Attendees met online and in-person for the forum...

Demonstrating energy-efficient conversion of nitrate pollutants into ammonia

The nitrate runoff problem, a source of carcinogens and a cause of suffocating algal blooms in U.S. waterways, may not be a harbinger of doom. A new study led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) demonstrates an approach for the integrated capture and conversion of nitrate-contaminated waters into valuable ammonia...

Novel experimental platform enables first measurements of ion-acoustic wave bursts during magnetic reconnection

A series of experiments conducted at the Omega Laser, part of the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, provide new insights into magnetic reconnection, a process that could help explain stellar flares and other astrophysical phenomena. The research confirmed that unstable ion-acoustic waves (IAWs) could be important to further understanding of the dissipation physics...

All eyes on Lynda Tesillo

For Lynda Tesillo, Women’s History Month means more than reflecting on the past. Her path to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory started with studying engineering at a university — a decision which put her in a unique position within her family. “We had limited resources growing up, particularly when it came to affording an education,” Tesillo said. “At the time, my mother...