News

LLNL and Korea Institute of Science and Technology to collaborate

Leaders at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Monday to collaborate on basic science and technology in the renewable energy, climate science, data science and characterizations arenas. Under the MOU, KIST will have office space in the Livermore Open Campus where staff, postdocs...

Researchers design a compact high-power laser using plasma optics

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have designed a compact multi-petawatt laser that uses plasma transmission gratings to overcome the power limitations of conventional solid-state optical gratings. The design could enable construction of an ultrafast laser up to 1,000 times more powerful than existing lasers of the same size. Petawatt (quadrillion-watt) lasers...

LLNL and Las Positas College officials meet to discuss improving partnership, workforce pipeline

Officials with Las Positas College (LPC) and the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District visited Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) on Aug. 9 to learn more about Lab-related opportunities available to students and discuss strengthening partnerships between the institutions. LPC President Dyrell Foster, who was visiting the Lab for the first time, attended the meeting...

LLNL and Case Western Reserve University to continue collaboration

The leaders of Case Western Reserve University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to accelerate their efforts in shared areas of excellence. After three years of growing institutional collaboration in such areas as energy, materials science and polymer processing, Case Western Reserve President Eric W. Kaler welcomed Lawrence...

LLNL team claims top AI award at international symbolic regression competition

A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) team claimed a top prize at an inaugural international symbolic regression competition for an artificial intelligence (AI) framework they developed capable of explaining and interpreting real-life COVID-19 data. Hosted by the open source SRBench project at the 2022 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), the competition...

LLNL joins forces with supercomputing centers in Germany, the UK and the US to form IASC

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has signed a memorandum of understanding with high performance computing (HPC) facilities in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, jointly forming the International Association of Supercomputing Centers (IASC). LLNL and co-founders — the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Hartree Centre, the National Center for...

Understanding how radionuclides move

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) intern Jordan Stanberry is spending his summer examining pond sediments to better understand groundwater contamination from decades-old nuclear tests. A chemistry graduate student from the University of Central Florida (UCF), Stanberry is participating in an eight-week Glenn T. Seaborg Institute (GTSI) internship program. The program offers...

White House visit underscores a national need for diversity in STEM

This week, President Biden signed into law the bipartisan bill known as the CHIPS and Science Act (CSC ACT). The bill aims to strengthen U.S. competition by encouraging U.S. companies to manufacture semiconductors and by revitalizing “America’s scientific research and technological leadership." Under Title V: Broadening Participation in Science of the bill, the White House will push to build...

A life in leadership: Bauer to depart after guiding Lab through multi-layered challenges

Following decades in management at National Nuclear Security Administration production sites, Linda Bauer aspired to put her leadership skills to the test in the science and technology side of the nuclear enterprise as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL's) deputy director. Bauer, a self-described “road warrior,” had hoped LLNL would be the capstone to her career, a place to...

Going deep: New ground motion model more accurately simulates earthquakes, explosions

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have created a new adjoint waveform tomography model that more accurately simulates earthquake and explosion ground motions. The paper, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, was selected for an Editor’s Highlight. Seismic tomography is a method to estimate the inaccessible three-dimensional (3D) seismic material...

Lab’s technology on board James Webb Space Telescope

Last month, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a partnership with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, revealed unprecedented and detailed views of the universe, with the release of its first full-color images and spectroscopic data. The cosmic objects that Webb targeted for these first observations were released July 12 and are available on the NASA website...

Three peer-reviewed papers highlight scientific results of National Ignition Facility record yield shot

After decades of inertial confinement fusion research, a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ) was achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) for the first time on Aug. 8, 2021, putting researchers at the threshold of fusion gain and achieving scientific ignition. On the one-year anniversary of this historic achievement, the scientific...

Graphite changes to hexagonal diamond in picoseconds

The graphite-diamond phase transition is of particular interest for fundamental reasons and a wide range of applications. On very fast compression time scales, material kinetics hinder the transition from graphite to the equilibrium cubic diamond crystal structure that we commonly know as diamond. Shock wave compression of graphite typically requires pressures above 50 GPa (500,000...

Lab researchers win top award for machine learning-based approach to ICF experiments

The IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) announced a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) team as the winner of its 2022 Transactions on Plasma Science (TPS) Best Paper Award for their work applying machine learning to inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. In the paper, lead author Kelli Humbird and co-authors propose a novel technique for calibrating ICF...

New class of 3D-printed alloys brings more flexibility to super-strong metal parts

Metal 3D printing is used to produce components for many commercial applications, particularly in the transportation sector, where printing methods such as laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) can produce super-strong and ultralight complex-shaped components that cannot be manufactured with conventional techniques. But while laser-based methods enable the manufacturing of materials that can...

An open-source, data-science toolkit for energy GridDS

As of 2020, 102.9 million smart meters — devices that record and communicate electric consumption, voltage and current to consumers and grid operators — have been installed in the United States. As the number of smart meters and the demand for energy is expected to increase by 50 percent by 2050, so will the amount of data those smart meters produce. While energy standards have enabled...

Research finds mechanically driven chemistry accelerates reactions in explosives

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Energetic Materials Center and Purdue University Materials Engineering Department used simulations performed on the LLNL supercomputer Quartz to uncover a general mechanism that accelerates chemistry in detonating explosives critical to managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile. Their research is featured in the July 15 issue of...

Breanna Bishop selected as LLNL’s senior director of strategic communications

Breanna Bishop has been named as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) senior director of strategic communications, Director Kimberly Budil announced today. Her appointment will be effective July 31. In this new role, Bishop will lead and manage the planning and execution of an integrated internal and external communications program that effectively informs and engages...

Researchers successfully execute Miramar experiment to support U.S. stockpile modernization efforts

A multi-institutional team of researchers and collaborators successfully executed an integrated vessel confinement system (VCS) experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), as part of an experimental campaign to study how nuclear materials react to high explosives without conducting a traditional nuclear test. The experiment — dubbed Miramar — was an extensive collaboration...

LLNL Veterans Showcase: Jerry Mullins

The Veterans/Military Outreach and Recruiting Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is committed to supporting and recruiting military students, reservists, active duty and transitioning service men, women and veterans. The program’s initial focus on recruiting and hiring has aided directly in the employment of many veterans, with many more serving in internships ranging...