Nine scientists named Distinguished Members of Technical Staff

Nine Laboratory scientists have joined the ranks of 14 other researchers by being named members of the Lab's Distinguished Members of Technical Staff (DMTS) for their extraordinary scientific and technical contributions to the Laboratory and its missions as acknowledged by their professional peers and the larger community.

Maya Gokhale of the Computation Directorate, Ernst (Ted) Scharlemann of Global Security, George Anzelon of Global Security, Ray Beach of NIF, Ian Hutcheon of the Physical and Life Sciences (PLS) Directorate, Carlos Iglesias of PLS, John Moriarty of PLS, Julianna Hsu of the Weapons and Complex Integration (WCI) Principal Directorate and John Tipton of WCI have earned the DMTS designation by reaching the highest technical staff level achievable by a scientist or engineer at the Lab.

The DMTS classification was created to serve as a career ladder for LLNL scientists and engineers within the Science & Engineering (S&E) classification structure. It appropriately recognizes outstanding S&T excellence with distinction and compensation while allowing the honored recipients to remain focused on delivering science and engineering solutions to critical mission areas of the Laboratory.

Maya Gokhale
Maya Gokhale who joined the Laboratory in 2007 is one of the founders of the field of reconfigurable computing. She also has been instrumental in developing the hardware and software to make field programmable gate array (FPGA) systems usable and accessible to research community and in persistent memory solutions for HPC. Her work has impacted high performance computing (HPC) architecture design and planning.

"This is an exciting time for computing at the Lab as we design high performance architectures for data intensive computing and simultaneously face immense challenges to achieve exascale," Gokhale said. "I'm glad to be involved in those challenges with my colleagues at LLNL and the community."

Ernst (Ted) Scharlemann
During his nearly 30-year LLNL tenure, Ted Scharlemann has become known as a national expert on specific proliferation processes and their signatures by multiple government agencies. In the last seven years, his work has had major impacts on National Intelligence Estimates, Presidential Daily Briefs, Intelligence Community Timeline Estimates and more. He is recognized for the development of the theoretical understanding for complex electromagnetic phenomena associated with several national security missions and application to enable critical capabilities that are used in theater.

"I'm surprised and delighted to be selected to DMTS, but of course also very honored," he said. "The Lab has provided many exciting challenges in a variety of fields throughout my career here, and continues to do so."

George Anzelon
George Anzelon, a 36-year Lab veteran, is recognized for his leadership and deep understanding of technical, policy and intelligence issues in nuclear non-proliferation.  He has demonstrated expertise and leadership in difficult real-world situations in Libya, North Korea and Iraq in support of ground inspections and actions to contain or eliminate nuclear proliferation in these countries.  In addition, Anzelon mentors next generation of LLNL experts.

"I don't presume to belong in the same scientific company with other DMTS awardees, but I'm thrilled by this implicit recognition of the contributions that Global Security and its predecessors have made over the years," he said. "As someone who's been at this since the 1970s, a special joy for me these days is the chance to work with a new generation of talented individuals who have so much to teach us."

Ray Beach
Ray Beach, a 26-year LLNL veteran, has pioneered many current techniques in the field of high-average-power diode-pumped lasers and demonstrated a number of firsts in the field. His research and patents in diode pumped lasers have enabled numerous commercial and Department of Defense applications, as well as development of the NIF and Mercury laser.

"DMTS is a great honor and I feel very privileged to have been chosen, but in the end the accomplishments that have been cited for me are more due to the people I've worked with here at LLNL and the Lab itself than anything I've done on my own," Beach said.

Ian Hutcheon
In his nearly 20 years at the Lab, Ian Hutcheon has been classified as a key developer of nuclear forensics as both a field of scientific investigation and a scientific discipline with significant application to national security. In addition to his national security research, Hutcheon conducted ground breaking investigations of nucleosynthetic processes, the formation mechanisms of planets and meteorites, and subtle, diffusion transport processes in terrestrial and planetary melts, glasses, and minerals; and conducted (with Peter Weber) the first nanoSIMS-enabled studies of biological materials. Hutcheon also wrote the definitive nuclear forensics book, (with Kenton Moody, a DMTS awardee in 2012) "Nuclear Forensic Analysis."

"I appreciate the Laboratory's recognition of my efforts over the past 20 or so years to carry-out science of the highest caliber in the areas of isotope geochemistry, cosmochemistry and nuclear forensics and to support Laboratory programs across a variety of disciplines," he said. "I also want to thank the many colleagues in my group, in the Chemical Sciences Division, and throughout the Lab whose participation made my achievements possible."

Carlos Iglesias
Carlos Iglesias is recognized as a world leader in theory, computational tools, algorithms, codes. and experimental analysis of hot dense plasmas. Iglesias along with Forrest Rogers developed the OPAL opacity code for astrophysical and laboratory plasmas - a key part of the 'Standard Solar Model' and deemed the field's "gold standard."

John Moriarty
During his 31 years at the Laboratory, John Moriarty has distinguished himself as a known world leader in the microscopic modeling of the quantum behaviors of metals and alloys, particularly including programmatically significant actinides. He developed robust predictive methods, opening the way toward rigorous density functional calculations of heavy-metal electronic structure and his methods underpin much of the atomistic and multiscale modeling work in the Condensed Matter & Materials Division, and provided a scientific underpinning for the favored plutonium equation of state.

"For me personally, this honor caps a long and rewarding career at LLNL," Moriarty said. "The Lab has afforded me the opportunity and good fortune to pursue basic science in materials physics, to lead and collaborate with world-class scientists, and to apply scientific advances to achieve important programmatic goals in our national security mission."

Juliana Hsu
Juliana Hsu is the foremost primary designer in the weapons complex as evidenced by successfully garnering two Life Extension Programs (LEP's) for LLNL. Hsu, who started at the Laboratory in 1996, is instrumental in developing the certification methodology, in the absence of testing, and applying it over the last decade to enabled LLNL success.  Specifically, LLNL has been assigned the lead role by NNSA for the both 78/88 LEP and the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) weapon. She has been recognized by the JASON Defense Advisory Group, SAGSAT (STRATCOM Stockpile Assessment Team), and NNSA as the leading technical expert regarding primary design.

"Throughout the last 17 years, the work has always been intellectually challenging and stimulating, and WCI has provided the environment and invested a great deal for me to become an expert in weapons design and physics," Hsu said. "The work has been especially meaningful because we have a national mission, and I have always felt personally responsible for the small part that I play in our nuclear deterrent. I think the DMTS honor is much more than the individual effort. I have always had great teams and colleagues to work with, and that is the true strength of the Laboratory."

Robert Tipton
Robert Tipton is internationally recognized as the premier computational physicist in the weapons program and "Father of Stewardship Codes."  He also developed Arbitrary Lagrange-Eulerian hydro code - known as CALE -- which is widely used by the Department of Energy and Department of Defense and DOD for many applications involving equation of state, opacity, radiation transport, high explosives, laser deposition and MHD, including munitions and armory.

"Science is a process in which a number of individual scientists working separately contribute little bits and pieces to the larger effort of a scientific community. It's not always healthy to single out a few individuals and pass over the contributions from the larger community of scientists," Tipton said. "However, as with any endeavor, some scientists will be recognized as leaders in their field. The DMTS award is one such symbol of scientific leadership and for that I am both humbled and gratified."

Only a limited number of scientists and engineers are selected for recognition at the DMTS level. Following the practices of other laboratories and industry, it is expected that the population of DMTS will never grow to more than roughly 3 percent to 5 percent of the eligible pool of scientists and engineers.