• Tariq Aslam
  • Rodney Borup
  • William Daughton
  • Tess Light
  • Filip Ronning
  • Richard Van de Water
  • Hari Viswanathan
  • Ivan Vitev
  • Scott Watson

2022

David Chavez of High Explosives Science and Technology (Q-5) was named a fellow for his pioneering physical insights into synthetic organic chemistry for energetic materials, his innovations in the development of new explosives and his unwavering commitment to high-level intellectual achievements. Chavez plays a pivotal role in providing critical leadership in the energetic materials field for the nuclear weapons program and the broader defense and national security communities.

Tim Germann of Physics and Chemistry of Materials (T-1) was selected for his distinguished career at the Laboratory, making seminal scientific contributions in a number of computational areas and serving in a number of leadership roles at Los Alamos and nationally. Germann is an internationally recognized authority for three main bodies of work: computational materials science, computational epidemiology and computational co-design.

Neil Harrison of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MPA-MAGLAB) is an internationally recognized leader in the broad field of condensed-matter physics. He was named a fellow for his pioneering work on the use of very strong magnetic fields to unravel the electronic structure of strongly correlated materials, most notably high-temperature superconductors, and for his discovery of the importance of electronic entropy in the phase stabilization of plutonium.

Ricardo Lebensohn of Fluid Dynamics and Solid Mechanics (T-3) was named a fellow for his impact and recognition in the field of microstructure and property relationships of polycrystalline materials. His ideas and computational approaches drive the field and influence virtually everyone performing microstructure-aware computational modeling of polycrystalline materials. Lebensohn has had a tremendous impact on the Laboratory’s mission and is recognized as an international authority by both the Laboratory and external scientific communities.

Hui Li of Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology (T-2) was selected as a fellow for major discoveries in the field of plasma astrophysics. He is recognized as the main person to discover and fully explain Rossby wave instabilities and their role in transporting angular momentum in proto-stellar and protoplanetary disks, one of the most important physics issues in stellar and planetary formation.

Babetta Marrone of Microbial and Biome Sciences (B-IOME) was named a fellow for her high-level scientific achievement in the fields of bioenergy and biosecurity. Marrone has made numerous contributions to basic and applied research that impact the Laboratory’s national security programs in bioforensics and bioeconomy research. She is a recognized authority in biosciences and has served in national-level positions and on committees in related fields.

Karissa Sanbonmatsu of Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (T-6) was named a fellow for her contributions to the development of large-scale computational models of biomolecular machines. Sanbonmatsu’s cutting-edge work in furthering biological understanding through computational methods has been implemented on the most advanced high-performance computing platforms. Her pioneering work demonstrates and reinforces the profound scientific contributions of advanced computational methods and platforms in tackling complex, multi-scale numerical problems.

Lin Yin of the Laboratory’s Plasma Theory and Applications group is one of the world’s foremost experts on the physics of laser plasma interactions. She was named a fellow for her important discoveries in the physics of laser scattering and energy coupling in inertial confinement fusion experiments on major laser facilities for the weapons program. She has also made groundbreaking discoveries in laser-driven ion acceleration using high-intensity short-pulse lasers, which have applications in society and national security.

Jianxin Zhu of the Physics of Condensed Matter and Complex Systems (T-4) was selected as a fellow for his distinguished career using theory and computation to advance our understanding of the physics and electronic structure underlying strongly correlated materials, quantum materials, functional materials and actinides. These materials are at the center of current scientific research, with applications in energy security, nanotechnology, and platforms for quantum computing.

2021

Elizabeth Hunke

Elizabeth Hunke, of the Lab’s Fluid Dynamics and Solid Mechanics Group, is internationally recognized as the world’s leading modeler of sea ice. Hunke leads the CICE Consortium, an international collaboration of sea ice modelers, and is a senior member the Lab’s climate modeling team, which contributes cutting-edge research and development for the Department of Energy’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) project. She has been a key force in mentoring two generations of climate team members. She also serves as the program manager for the Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division in DOE’s Office of Science, a $30 million portfolio of experimental and modeling research.

Baolian Cheng

Baolian Cheng, of the Plasma Theory and Applications Group, has made sustained high-level contributions to national security and the Lab’s mission over the past 25 years. Her discoveries have fundamentally affected the methodology for weapons certification. Throughout her career, Cheng has made vital contributions to hydrodynamic instabilities and mix, pit lifetime studies, primary certification metrics, primary boost metrics, and thermonuclear ignition metrics for inertial confinement fusion. Furthermore, she is a global expert on boost and ignition metrics, and is known for her strong foundational and first principles theoretical developments.

Blas Uberuaga

For more than 20 years, Blas Uberuaga, of the Materials Science in Radiation and Dynamics Extremes Group, has contributed to the field of atomistic modeling of radiation effects in materials where he performed pioneering research in complex oxides and nanomaterials. He is the director of DOE’s Fundamental Understanding of Transport Under Reactor Extremes (FUTURE), which researches the extreme conditions of irradiation and corrosion that impact materials in nuclear reactors. His scientific work to understand these effects continues to showcase the Laboratory’s expertise. Additionally, he’s shown exceptional leadership in the mentoring of 27 postdoctoral researchers and six graduate students.

David Smith

David Smith, of the Space and Remote Sensing Group, has made groundbreaking contributions to the fundamental understanding of natural and human-made radio-frequency signatures. He led the transfer and implementation of these discoveries into an array of satellite-based electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) sensors for the U.S. Nuclear Detonation Detection System. He is also a highly effective leader of complex and high-consequence space systems. His foundational work in lightning physics includes the discovery of a new class of lightning. He developed advanced techniques for classifying EMP signatures, which enabled the automated separation of nuclear detonation signatures from lightning and other natural and human-made signatures.

2020

Ralph Menikoff

Ralph Menikoff, of Physics and Chemistry of Materials (T-1), is an expert in high explosives (HE) and shock physics. Menikoff’s career at the Laboratory has spanned over four decades marked by vital contributions to shock physics and HE science, as well as his leadership in the formulation, implementation and close user support of HE burn models at the core of the Laboratory’s mission. Menikoff has been a primary developer of the Scaled Uniform Reactive Front (SURF) model and its successor, SURF-plus, which have become cornerstones of the Lab’s approach to HE burn modeling.

Joseph Martz

Joseph Martz, of the Materials Science and Technology (MST-DO), is an expert in plutonium chemistry and weapon materials. Martz’s accomplishments include the development of a plutonium pyrophoricity model and codevelopment of the ARIES weapon dismantlement concept. Martz researched plutonium storage degradation and authored the first Department of Energy plutonium storage standard. Martz proposed the plutonium aging program at the Lab, making critical contributions in understanding pit lifetimes. Martz was the Laboratory's head for the Reliable Replacement Warhead competition and is a popular speaker on nuclear weapon history, testing, design and policy.  He was selected the inaugural William J. Perry fellow at Stanford University in 2009.

Vania Jordanova

Vania Jordanova, of Space Science and Applications (ISR-1), is an expert in space physics and space weather, which refers to the adverse impact of the dynamic space environment on human technological systems. Jordanova is a recognized international authority on geomagnetic storms, when vast amounts of energy is transferred from the solar wind into the near-Earth space environment (the magnetosphere). Specifically, Jordanova has developed or led the development of state-of-the-art models of the complex interplay between charged particles and the Earth’s magnetic field.

Tanmoy Battacharya

Tanmoy Bhattacharya, of Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology (T-2), works in the fields of Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) for high-energy and nuclear physics, fundamentals of quantum mechanics, quantum computation, computational approaches to evolutionary biology and linguistics, data science, machine learning and vaccine development. Bhattacharya has sustained high-level intellectual achievements in programs of importance to the Laboratory; made fundamental, important discoveries that have been widely employed; and become a recognized authority nationally and internationally in the fields of lattice QCD, evolutionary linguistics and computational biology.

Christopher Fontes

Christopher Fontes, of Materials and Physical Data (XCP-5), is an expert in relativistic atomic physics. He is a developer of the Los Alamos suite of atomic codes, which is considered to be a theoretical benchmark capability for plasma emission modeling. Fontes has sustained a high level of achievement and leadership in atomic and plasma physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has made pioneering contributions to the understanding of atomic processes in plasmas and their application to a broad range of physics problems including nuclear fusion, laboratory experiment and astrophysics.

Thomas Leitner

Thomas Leitner, of Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (T-6), is an expert in phylodynamics, the study of how epidemiological, immunological and evolutionary processes act and interact to shape viral phylogenies. Leitner is recognized for his contributions to the development of the field of phylodynamics, his pioneering work on exploiting phylogenetics to trace HIV evolution and epidemiology and the application of evolutionary biology to forensics. His work is recognized internationally, which has helped him attract many superb postdoctoral fellows to Los Alamos who are now directly contributing to the Laboratory’s mission.

John Lestone

John Lestone, of Radiation Transport Applications (XCP-7), is a leading weapon neutronics expert. Lestone has had a substantial impact on many areas of weapons physics, including his highly impactful weapons research contributions that have advanced new neutron-diagnosed subcritical experiments and allowed the laboratory to exploit data from historic Nevada neutron experiments. Lestone’s research that determined the prompt fission neutron spectrum to unprecedented accuracy is an important discovery that has led to widespread use.

2019

Laura Smilowitz

Laura Smilowitz, of Physical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, is an expert in the dynamic/thermal response of energetic materials and high-speed diagnostics, and is also an authority in experiments applied to key materials relevant to nuclear weapons, conventional defense and global security. She developed laser pulsing of high explosives in synchronicity with proton radiography to accelerate ignition and enable high-resolution radiography of subsonic thermal explosions. Smilowitz is the designer, driver and principal investigator for high-visibility, thermal explosion experiments, giving new capability to understand and model those explosions.

Anna Hayes Sterbenz

Anna Hayes-Sterbenz, of Nuclear and Particle Physics, is a nuclear physics theorist advancing theory by supporting basic science and weapons programs. She is an expert on nuclear structure and reactions and an authority on analysis of accelerator and reactor-based neutrino experiments. She was the first to use reaction-in-flight neutron production to diagnose mix in inertial confinement fusion; she supports the Lab’s global security mission through development of methods to diagnose reactor operations that can detect proliferation activity.

Michael Prime

Michael Prime, of Advanced Engineering Analysis, is a leading expert in modelling the strength and damage of metals under extreme conditions. He is instrumental to the design, simulation, manufacture, fielding and interpretation of subcritical experiments used to define modern stockpile stewardship in the post-underground test era. Prime is the sole inventor of the contour method to measure residual stress that is universally adopted by several major industries worldwide.

Michael Hamada

Michael Hamada, of Statistical Sciences, is an authority on statistical methods and applications, especially Bayesian methods. He developed and applied PowerFactoRE, a suite of tools to identify and diagnose reliability, transforming operations at Procter and Gamble, saving them nearly $1 billion. Hamada enabled the weapons program to make reliability forecasts when the data are sparse, allowing NNSA to accept metrics to assess the effectiveness of surveillance. He also made contributions to pit manufacturing, annual reliability assessments, resolving significant findings and life extension programs. He is the author of two definitive books on statistics and its use.

Brian Albright

Brian Albright, of Primary Physics, is an expert in plasma physics with diverse and high-impact contributions in both open science and nuclear weapons. His breakthrough research on laser-driven ion acceleration has led to record-setting performance that is enabling new applications, while his novel contributions to boost physics are impacting the ability to assess and certify the current and future stockpile.

Dana Dattelbaum

Dana Dattelbaum, of Explosive Science and Shock Physics, is an authority on and major contributor to the base shock physics underpinning the weapons program. She has designed and executed numerous fundamental experiments leading to the understanding of initiation, reaction and detonation of explosives. She plays an integral role in establishing and understanding the properties of high explosives and soft materials essential to National Nuclear Security Administration and Department of Defense programs.

2018

Sergei Tretiak

Sergei Tretiak, a member of the Laboratory’s Theoretical Division,  is an exceptionally creative chemical physicist. The overarching theme of his research is to develop a theoretical framework for electronic properties in complex molecular structures. These materials are at the center of current scientific research, with potential applications in photonics, displays and sunlight harvesting, such as photovoltaic devices based on organic and organic–inorganic active materials. His numerous significant contributions to the understanding of optical processes in advanced, reduced-dimensional materials are being developed for optoelectronics applications. His theoretical studies have provided extremely important descriptions of photo-physical-chemical phenomena in novel molecular systems. The suite of powerful theoretical techniques and elaborate codes that Tretiak developed has substantially influenced the way computational materials chemistry is currently studied worldwide. He is one of the world leaders in understanding non-linear excitations, such as in optical materials. Tretiak has mentored and trained more than 20 postdoctoral associates and 80 summer students, and he won the LANL Postdoctoral Distinguished Mentor Award in 2015. He is a world-leading electronic structure theorist who has transformed optical material science to enable next-generation energy systems.

Lawrence Hull

Lawrence Hull, while a member of the Integrated Weapons Experiments Division, has made sustained, high-level intellectual contributions to both the weapons program and broader scientific community in over 30 years working at Los Alamos. He is the leading authority in understanding the complex mechanisms and physics underlying high-explosive–metal interactions. He has received over 21 awards, including four LANL Distinguished Performance Awards, eight National Nuclear Security Administration Defense Programs Awards of Excellence, and one unique Commendation from the UK Ministry of Defense. Particularly notable is Hull’s vast creativity and ingenuity in designing and executing difficult experiments dealing with high explosives and shock physics. Hull has made deep, enduring and direct impacts on the safety, security and effectiveness of our nuclear stockpile.

Angel Garcia

Angel Garcia works for the Center for Nonlinear Studies and has earned international recognition as a world renowned theoretical and computational biophysicist. His research has illuminated the physics of life and the supporting letters call him a giant in theoretical and computational biophysics and a pioneer in the study of macromolecular conformation, dynamics and folding. His ideas and approaches drive the field and influence almost everyone performing bio-molecular simulations. He invented principal component analysis of large-scale and amplitude motions in proteins. In his work on biomolecular computations, he addressed basic chemical physics such as cavities in proteins, solvation, hydration, electrostatics and the nature of molecular interactions. Garcia has made fundamental contributions to art of molecular dynamic simulation that have been widely adopted and used by the molecular dynamics community. He has 171 peer-reviewed publications. Garcia has provided sustained intellectual and scientific leadership in support of mission science through his leadership of the Center for Non-Linear Studies (CNLS). 

Dave Jablonski

Dave Jablonski, a staff member of the Laboratory’s X Theoretical Design Division, has made contributions to stockpile stewardship and national security of striking breadth. He exhibits a rare combination of creativity, physical intuition, persistence, skepticism, and attention to detail. These qualities have allowed him to make seminal advances in the science and design of nuclear weapons. Jablonski has pioneered new approaches to old problems that enabled transformations in understanding. The most significant of these have been in the areas of energy balance, boost physics, and design procedures. In each case, the pioneering work led to fundamental changes in how the problem was framed, changes in methods, and later breakthroughs by the broader community. Jablonski has distinguished himself with a strong publication history and an exceptional record mentoring junior staff.

2017

Donald Burton

Donald Burton of the Computational Physics division at the Laboratory is the inventor of computational methods that have become standards in the field and are used all over the world daily in hydrodynamic computations. His codes have been central to the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program since its inception and have enormously impacted both the nation’s nuclear stockpile stewardship program and the broader scientific community. Burton is the leading inventor for the conservative Lagrangian methods in shock wave compression of condensed matter, has written more than 200 papers and reports, and has served as a mentor to numerous students and postdoctoral researchers.

Manvendra Dubey

Manvendra Dubey of the Laboratory’s Earth and Environmental Sciences division is internationally recognized for his high-level strategic involvement in climate research that has moved the issue to center stage for Department of Energy program offices and the national laboratory system. The hallmark of Dubey’s work is excellence in conception, execution, analysis, and synthesis; his work has changed the science community’s understanding of aerosol impacts on planetary temperatures. Additionally, Dubey’s work on methane emissions in the Four Corners area has led to new Laboratory programs and highlighted the need for research on methane impacts to the environment.

 

2016

Roger Wiens

Roger Wiens, of Space and Remote Sensing, is the principal investigator behind ChemCam, a laser spectroscopy instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover. One of the most exciting discoveries made by Curiosity is that there is indeed water on Mars. Earlier this year, Wiens received the honorary title of chevalier (knight) in France’s Academic Order of Palms for establishing strong ties between American and French scientific communities.

Scott Crooker

Scott Crooker, of Condensed Matter and Magnet Science, is an accepted international authority in the optical studies of semiconductors. Crooker’s many contributions include designing spin currents in semiconductors, developing and applying optical spectroscopies to probe magnetization and studying spin dynamics in condensed matter. He won the 2007 Los Alamos Fellows Prize.

Jennifer Hollingsworth

Jennifer Hollingsworth, of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, has made significant contributions to the field of core/shell semiconductor nanocrystalline quantum dots (NQDs). In 2013, Hollingsworth received the Los Alamos Fellows Prize for her NQD work.

2015

Piotr Zelenay

Piotr Zelenay has made sustained contributions in the field of catalysis. His discovery of non-platinum group catalytic activity is a well-recognized advance in fuel cell technology. He has headed a large, sustained effort in fuel cell technology supported by the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy since 2007, forming a cornerstone of Los Alamos’s successful fuel cell program, and spinning off next-generation energy technologies. His continued high-level achievement is reflected in more than 150 publications with 6,700 total citations, as well as 18 patents (granted or in process). His work is generally considered among the very best worldwide; for example, his paper on non-platinum group catalysis in the journal Nature has over 800 citations.

Avadh Saxena

Avadh Saxena has shown how materials modeling methods can be used to answer many key questions in materials science, thereby becoming an international authority in phase transitions in both functional materials and nonlinear excitations in low-dimensional electronic materials.  He is influential as a collaborator and intellectual leader over a broad range of materials and condensed matter physics, with almost 5,000 citations of his work. Saxena has an impressive list of international collaborations, invited talks, publications, and service on advisory boards, and was elected an American Physics Society Fellow in 2014 “for foundational contributions to phase transitions in functional materials and nonlinear excitations in low-dimensional electronic materials.” His work on phase transformations has proven valuable to the Laboratory’s Advanced Strategic Computing Program and helped clarify a detailed mechanism for the alpha to delta phase transformation in plutonium.

2014

Jaqueline Kiplinger

Jaqueline Kiplinger is a recognized pioneer in uranium and thorium chemistry, and her research has significantly expanded the broad understanding of actinide and lanthanide chemical bonding and reactivity. Her synthetic innovations, often accomplished through chemistry previously thought impossible, have been adopted by researchers around the world. For her internationally recognized work, Kiplinger has been named a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She has received the Los Alamos Fellows Prize for Research, and most significantly, she was just awarded the American Chemical Society’s 2015 F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry. Kiplinger’s scientific achievements have been paralleled by her 15 years of dedicated service to the Laboratory. Her innovative “green” methods for preparing actinide materials have earned two R&D 100 Awards and two NNSA Best-in-Class Pollution Prevention Awards. Kiplinger’s sustained excellence in mentoring numerous students and postdocs has been recognized by Los Alamos’ Student Distinguished Mentor Award, STAR Award, and Postdoc Distinguished Mentor Award.

Herbert Funsten

Herbert Funsten is recognized as a world-renowned experimental space scientist and has led science instruments on NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) and Van Allen Probes missions and national security instruments on the DOE’s SABRS Validation Experiment (SAVE) and Space and Atmospheric Burst Reporting System (SABRS) payloads, while also participating in NASA’s Cassini, Two Wide-angle Imaging Neutral-atom Spectrometers (TWINS), Deep Space 1, Mars Odyssey, and Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) missions. He has made outstanding contributions to heliophysics as the principal investigator on the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) instrument that first discovered the “ribbon” of neutral atom emission from the Sun’s interaction with the interstellar medium. He has provided outstanding scientific leadership at Los Alamos as the Intelligence and Space Research Division chief scientist, former director of the Center for Space Science and Exploration, and dedicated service to the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program. He is also a recognized mentor, winning the Women’s Career Development Award.

Christopher Fryer

Christopher Fryer is a widely recognized authority in astrophysics and is an American Physical Society fellow, a former Feynman Fellow, and he has been at Los Alamos 15 years. He is recognized for his supernova core collapse modeling work, able to model, predict, and explain observations (e.g. from NASA’s Swift mission), which broke ground by moving to 3-dimensional modeling assimilation. He has made valuable contributions to aid NASA in defining future astrophysics missions, and he sustains a wide range of collaborations with broader physics facilities. He is also involved in nuclear stockpile science, extending computer code capabilities especially in the areas of verification and validation.

2013

Mark Chadwick

Mark Chadwick, from the Lab’s Applied Computational Physics Division, attained worldwide recognition for his contributions in nuclear physics. He has made important contributions to the evolution of nuclear science, supported by his nuclear models and cross section databases. Chadwick’s work has been applied in stockpile stewardship, nuclear-engineering and reactor safety and global security. His work also aided the development of medical technologies for radiation therapy. Chadwick’s nuclear physics work supports collaboration among the national laboratories, and he chairs national and international nuclear data efforts.  Chadwick was awarded the Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence award for advancing an understanding of fission product yields and other key nuclear reactions resulting in the resolution of a long-standing problem in national security. An exceptional leader, Chadwick has organized 11 international conferences, and has over 110 peer-reviewed papers that have received 5000 citations —including one journal article that alone has been cited more than 900 times. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Geoff Reeves

Geoff Reeves is a well-known space physics leader who supports the mission of the Laboratory’s International Space and Response Division. This frequent international speaker and prolific author made Los Alamos space weather data available to the broad scientific community, supporting worldwide advances. His work has been cited more than 5,600 times.  A Los Alamos Fellows Prize recipient, Reeves recently helped solve a 50-year-old space mystery about how electrons within Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts can become energetic enough to kill orbiting satellites. His research may help make space weather forecasting possible and accurate so satellites can be better protected. To further support integrated space situational awareness, Reeves also led a team that developed the Dynamic Radiation Environment Assimilation Model (DREAM) to predict hazards from the natural space environment or high-altitude nuclear explosions.

2012

Steven Elliott

Steven Elliott, of the Physics division’s Neutron Science & Technology group, is a world leader in the physics field of weak interactions, one of the four fundamental forces of nature beside the strong nuclear force, magnetism and gravity. His work has been at the center of the discovery of neutrino mass—one of the most important discoveries in fundamental physics in the past several decades.  With over 12,000 citations and as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, his work is recognized the world over.

Mikhail Shashkov

Mikhail Shashkov, of Computational Physics Division’s Methods and Algorithms group, is a world-recognized leader in and developer of modern Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) methods for high speed, multi-material flows that are the heart of Advanced Simulation and Computation (ACS) program for NNSA and Los Alamos weapons calculations.  His research and methods are extensively used at top research institutions around the world.  His advances in numerical methods for solving partial differential equations have been characterized as having more impact on the reliability and accuracy of large-scale PDE-based simulations at Los Alamos than any other advances in the past two decades.  Since coming to the Laboratory in 1994 from Russia, he has over 250 publications and more than 3400 citations.

Charles Farrar

Charles (Chuck) Farrar, of the Los Alamos National Security Education Center, is one of the preeminent structural health monitoring (SHM) pioneers in the world.  SHM, a relatively new field, has evolved out of the traditional nondestructive evaluation method.  However, while nondestructive evaluation tends to be a local inspection methodology usually accomplished with the system taken out of service, SHM focuses on continuous in situ monitoring of in-service systems on a larger scale.  Farrar’s 305 publications and over 8,500 citations have made seminal contributions in understanding damage detection for aerospace, civil and mechanical infrastructure, new concepts in statistical pattern recognition, highlighting the impact of operational and environmental variability on SHM, and in predicting remaining system life based on SHM output.  Farrar established the Los Alamos Dynamics Summer School and leads the Engineering Institute emphasizing education, research, and technology integration as a magnet for students, postdocs, technical staff, industrial partner, and external collaborators from around the world.

2011

Bruce Carlsten

Bruce Carlsten, of the Accelerator and Operations Technology Division's High-Power Electrodynamics Group, is a pioneer in the production and use of high-brightness electron beams with applications that span a range of Laboratory programs and which have found widespread usage worldwide. His discovery of techniques that have enabled unprecedented beam brightness has led to a new generation of intense free electron lasers, including the Laboratory's Navy Free Electron Laser, and MaRIE, a premier X-ray FEL facility that is currently in design. These ideas are of such fundamental importance that virtually every free-electron laser in the world has embraced them. As group leader of High-Power Electrodynamics, he has overseen a rapid growth in beam-based applications at the Laboratory including microwave tube development and advanced acceleration concepts, owning six patents in these areas. An APS Fellow since 2005 and recipient of the 1999 Accelerator School Prize for Achievement in Accelerator Physics, Carlsten is recognized internationally as an expert in accelerator physics and is considered among the best and most influential accelerator and FEL physicists in the nation.

2010

William Louis

William (Bill) Louis is one of the world leaders in neutrino physics and has led the Los Alamos accelerator-based neutrino experiments since the early 1990s. In particular, Louis led the Large Scintillation Neutrino Detector (LSND) collaboration, the most successful neutrino experiment to be carried out at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, and he is co-leader of the MiniBooNE experiment initiated in 1999 at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The results from LSND were both striking and anomalous; if confirmed definitively, they would require a major revision to the Standard Model of the universe, or at a minimum a revision to include the existence of “light, sterile neutrinos.” Recent results from MiniBooNE did not observe all the expected results from LSND. However, they do show an unexpected low-energy behavior of the spectrum of neutrino events that also would require re-thinking aspects of neutrinos and the Standard Model. Should these combined results turn out to be correct, many in the field will consider the discoveries to be historic. Louis’s publication record of more than 70 papers includes 22 with more than 50 citations, and three of them having more than 500 citations. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

John Sarrao

John Sarrao discovered the first plutonium-based superconductor, revolutionizing the field of actinide materials research. The discovery, coupled with Sarrao’s series of important discoveries of new materials and new physics, has made an enduring worldwide impact in condensed-matter physics. He is recognized for momentous contributions to the field of strongly-correlated electron systems. His work has generated great excitement in the materials physics community, and research efforts around the world have been redirected to build upon Sarrao’s discoveries. His work has been cited more than 6,000 times and he was distinguished as the Lab’s most published author every year between 2001 and 2007. Sarrao is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the Lab Fellows Prize for Outstanding Research in 2004. Sarrao now brings his exceptional creativity and scientific insight to bear as the lead for the Laboratory’s materials-centric future signature facility, MaRIE (Materials-Radiation Interactions in Extremes), which is intended to revolutionize the understanding of materials in extreme environments and conditions.

2009

Stephen A. Becker conducts research in astrophysics, weapons design, and intelligence assessment. He has participated in several nuclear tests, leading the design effort on four. His understanding of thermonuclear weapons design and interpretation of radiochemical diagnostics is recognized by colleagues nationally and internationally. Becker also has made major contributions to the Stockpile Stewardship program and has had a major impact on his scientific field through analysis of nuclear deterrence.

Toni Taylor

Toni Taylor is a pioneer in electromagnetic metamaterials, terahertz science and technology, and applying coherent control techniques to ultrafast optics, which provide unique insight into condensed-matter physics. She has made key contributions in the exploration of basic properties of superconductors through ultrafast techniques, made important demonstrations of exquisite control of phase and amplitude in ultrafast pulses leading to coherent control of propagation in fibers, and has contributed to novel metamaterial concepts leading to devices with unique dielectric properties.

2008

Paul Johnson

Paul A. Johnson is recognized as a driving force behind a new field of research: nonlinear, nonequilibrium dynamics. Recently, he became widely known for research that showed how earthquakes can trigger one another, sometimes long after the original event has subsided.

F3e3546c A55d 45c7 B56c 85fe3e501bd0

Kurt E. Sickafus is among the world's leading experts in understanding the effects of radiation on solid materials. His research has led to development of predictive models for radiation susceptibility in a wide range of oxide materials and has helped identify substances that are particularly radiation tolerant.

2007

Richard Sheffield is internationally recognized for his contributions to the development of ultra-high brightness beams and free electron lasers.

James Mercer-Smith is widely recognized for his scientific insight, deep technical understanding, and pivotal contributions to the field of nuclear weapons.

Roman Movshovich is an internationally recognized leader in low temperature physics whose scientific acumen and innovative thinking have led to significant discoveries and critical insight in elucidating the properties of strongly correlated electron and heavy fermion systems.

2006

Joyce Guzik has a sustained record of high-quality contributions to the nuclear weapons program and has produced a substantial body of internationally recognized work in astrophysics. She is also recognized for her work on stellar evolution and pulsation.

Rajan Gupta is a leading figure in the international high-energy physics community, having made pathbreaking contributions to the development of lattice quantum chromodynamics and computational high-energy physics.

2005

John Singleton is the world-renowned expert in the field of experimental condensed matter physics.  He has made seminal contributions in organic low-dimensional conductors, semiconductors, and magnetic materials.  He has pioneered several new experimental techniques using magnetic fields.  He also produced the first evidence for inhomogeneous superconductivity (the Larkin-Ovchinnikov-Fulde-Ferrell state).

2004

Joseph A. Carlson was honored for his pioneering efforts in the field of the theoretical simulation of the properties of light nuclei and for developing numerical techniques accurate enough to test all significant components of the nuclear force.

Brad A. Meyer was honored for his substantial contributions in the mission-critical area of gas transfer systems needed by the nuclear weapons program.

Victor I. Klimov was recognized for his ground-breaking research in the area of semiconductor nanocrystal quantum-dot photophysics, including his seminal contributions to the field of quantum dots, both in time domain studies of ultrafast energy transfer and Auger processes, as well as in the development of the quantum dot laser.

2002

G. T. (Rusty) Gray was honored for his record of achievement in the weapons materials program and international recognition as an authority in high strain rate and shock wave physics.

B. T. Korber is a noted authority in the field of molecular evolution and immunology with particular expertise in evolution of HIV and SIV viruses.

2001

D. L. Clark was named for his exceptional work in the structural inorganic and environmental chemistries of the actinides and his stewardship of the Seaborg Institute at Los Alamos. He is recognized internationally for his efforts to bring state-of-the-art molecular science concepts in structural characterization and theory of inorganic chemistry to the chemistry of the actinide elements. The most notable example of these efforts has been Clark's involvement in the development of a new research field known as molecular environmental science where molecular level understanding is used to unravel the fate and transport of actinide ions in the environment.

2000

L. A. Collins received the title of Laboratory Fellow in recognition of his status as a much-published, heavily cited author, and innovator of several widely used techniques in the computation of electron-molecule interactions and properties of dense plasmas. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, Collins has been an Associate Editor of Physical Review A since 1994 and is a driving force behind the Los Alamos Summer School in Physics, serving as its director since 1992.

1996

.

.

1991

.