View
220
Download
0
Category
Preview:
Citation preview
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
1/25LDRD Expanding Professional Horizons
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
2/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding ProfessionaLDRD Expanding Professiona
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
3/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
ContentsOverview 6
Early-Career 8
Mid-Career 22
Late-Career 36
Expanding Professional Horizons
For urther inormation, contact:
Henry R. Westrich
LDRD Program Manager
hrwestr@sandia.gov
505-844-9092
LDRD Expanding ProfessionaSANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
4/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
exemplars pointing the way to successul
research endeavors under the LDRD rubric.
Perhaps most importantly, LDRD is a
mechanism that has created a vast number
o cross-cultural partnerships across the
laboratory. Cross-center, cross-division,
or even cross-institution, scientists and
engineers o greatly diering skil l-sets
and backgrounds have been able to orge
partnerships in pursuit o a common
goal to discover new principles or
applications thereo, create new problem-
solving approaches or technologies, or
prove concepts or immature technologies
by resolving unknowns. Because science has
become so multidisciplinary, with common
underpinnings to problems that were once
viewed as germane only to speciic and
bounded disciplines, it stands to reason that
challenges at the leading edge o science
require cooperative assemblages o scientists
and engineers. For example, to seriously
approach solutions to optimization o certain
renewable energy sources within the context
o global climate change requires experts
in chemical thermodynamics, cell and
molecular biology, electrical and mechanical
engineering, microabrication, computationalmodeling, climatology, and perhaps other
areas as well. It is unlikely that this repository
o knowledge and understanding in depth
lies within the grasp o a single individual.
But at a national laboratory with the breadth
and depth o the research sta at Sandia, a
partnership o individuals in these ields is
not only possible, but has been demonstrated
in multiple instances during LDRD projects.
And in the context o Sandias multiple
and demanding mission exigencies, a sta
member who can expand his or her expertise
into ields related or complementary to
his/her central area o expertise, becomes
that much more valuable in the context
o orging such collaborative teams, both
in direct programmatic work, and in the
partnerships oten required to pursue the
leading-edge research unded through
LDRD. his will oten involve some degree
or orm o mentoring by more-experienced
sta members. In addition, such expansion
o personal expertise is oten acilitated
by partnerships with researchers rom
academia, industry or other government labs,
a eature o the LDRD program that is crucial
to recognize and to nurture. Although great
ideas are sometimes the product o single
individuals, it is perhaps more oten the case
that the development o truly innovative
science and technology lows rom the
collaboration o researchers who are all
working at the leading-edge o a challenge,
oten rom dierent but complementary
directions.
here is also ample evidence that LDRD has
attracted high-quality sta to Sandia, whomight otherwise not have come. From the
young scientist oered a position at MI
who instead chose the early-career lexibility
oered by his colleagues and his own LDRD
research to the graduate student, unaware
o Sandias position in the national landscape
and apprised o exciting Sandia research
by a riend or colleague, LDRD is a critical
recruiting resource, because there is reedom
to explore at the oreront o S&, to tackle
diicult and real-lie problems, to work with
the best and brightest researchers, and to
have impact. Scholarly publications are oten
the immediate outcome o such research
eorts, and this low o scholarly inormation
in the peer-reviewed literature and at
national and international meetings provides
Sandia and its LDRD program with critical
exposure or its researchers and vetting o its
scientiic or technical contributions. It is also
an invaluable recruiting tool a window
into exciting LDRD research or the young
scientist deciding on a career path.
In parallel with the external transparency
that scholarly publication coners, and given
the track record o positive interdisciplinary
collaborations, LDRD Program management
has been working to encourage all Sandia sta
to orm strategic partnerships both within
and outside Sandia. Most importantly, the
program continues to move in a direction
whereby sta understand that LDRD
welcomes projects, which because o their
ingenuity and innovative disposition, incur
risk. o allay this risk-aversion disposition in
sta members is critical to nurturing great
ideas and potentially boundary-breachingand status-quo-transcending research. Risk is
opportunity! Tese creative leaps into a more-
secure national uture are, indeed, the reason
that Congress unded LDRD at DOE national
laboratories. And in the ace o the immense
current challenges to national security,
encouraging risk-taking in developing creative
research strategies to address those challenges
is a crucial aspect o Sandia LDRD.
Rick Stulen, VP Science, Technology andEngineering, and Chie Technology Ocer,Sandia National Laboratories
he impact o the Laboratory Directed
Research and Development (LDRD) program
on sta at Sandia is elt in numerous ways
and at all levels o career development,
rom the individual who comes to Sandia
as a ruman Fellow, unded or three-years
o innovative research, through the late-
career sta member who, along the way, has
mentored and guided earlier-career sta in
diverse ways.
his publication highlights a myriad o ways
in which the Sandia LDRD Program has
nurtured sta development or individuals
at dierent stages o their careers. hese
20 stories are merely an exemplary subset,
and there are clearly other success stories,untold. In addition to sta development,
what emerges rom these stories is also the
creative energy that underlies the problem-
solving brilliance and collaboration that is
central to Sandia LDRD as its researchers
seek technical solutions to national security
challenges. hese individual and collective
characteristics are certainly worth noting
and perhaps even worth emulating as
Overview
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
5/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
Risk as Opportunityor Collaboration
Still Amazedby the PossibilitiesMeredith Anderson
Orphaned by the decision o her Ph.D. thesis
advisor at Ca rnegie-Mellon University (CMU)
to accept a position in industry, Meredith
Anderson returned to Sandia where she
had previously spent a summer month to
complete her graduate studies under the
tutelage o Sandian Brian Swartzentruber and
a committee back at CMU. It was a better way
to do it, she reminisces, considering hersel
ortunate to have been unded as a part o a
DOE basic energy sciences grant.
Ater deending her dissertation in 2004,
Anderson stayed on as a postdoctoral (postdoc)
researcher, and her mi nd quickly began to orm
bridges. I the imaging techniques she had
studied as a graduate student had been useul
in that context, then why not microelectronics?
I might as well, she thought the attitudinal
disposition o the academician to seek unding
sources well-ingrained in her psyche. I thought
it was a longshot, she says o the LDRD idea
she decided to submit, but they said they
wanted high risk. Convinced o the technical
merit o her idea, Meredith ound hersel still
amazed by what had become possible in the
eld o materials imaging. For example, based
on the quantum mechanical phenomenon o
electron tunneling, the Nobel Prizewinning
invention o scanning tun neling microscopy
had allowed researchers to image suraces at
the atomic level with a resolution o 0.1 nm,an astounding capability or microscopists
satised with electron microscope resolutions
o perhaps 5 nm, prior to the discovery.
For Meredith Anderson, such capabilities
are motivating, keeping the work exciting
and u n. Hence, despite her skepticism,
her irst attempt at LDRD unding achieved
success to her great, but pleasant, surprise.
And as A nderson plunged into the research,
she discovered as many researchers
do a t wo-edged sword. One edge cut
cleanly and precisely, conirming the
exciting propositions tendered in
the prospectus, while the
other edge raised as
many question as it
answered, provoking
some conusion.
his didnt stop
Anderson, or
she had already
learned the value
o consultation
and collaboration.
urning to senior
scientist,
Ed Cole, still an
active researcher
in this area o
characterizing
microelectronics deects provoked by various
actors, Anderson ound him interested
not only in her LDRD project, but also in
eliciting her participation on some o his
own work.
Despite these positive outcomes in eliciting
senior collaboration, Anderson was still a
postdoc leading an LDRD project, and in
light o this situation, her management hired
her as a limited-term sta member. Centered
in the nanosciences and microsystems area,
Anderson believes that her irst LDRD
project beneitted rom its good timing,
in the sense that Sa ndias Microsystems
and Engineering Sciences Applications
(MESA) project was approaching completionduring this same period. As such, as its
microelectronics/optoelectronics acilities
became operational, Anderson was heavily
involved in contributing to the team eort
that brought the acilities ully on line. I
know I did a good job at my parts o the
work, she recalls, this assessment supported
by a suggestion rom Cole that she should
consider writing a second LDRD proposal.
A high-resolution micrograph o s
capable o distinguishing p-dope
regions. (lighter areas) rom n-do
regions (darker areas).
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
6/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
Anderson had ound a mentor and a team o
collaborators rom several organizations, her
microcopy results showing a high potential or
her work to have signicant impact in imaging
details o microelectronics components or
a variety o Sandia mission applications. Te
rst LDRD project, a more undamental
and exploratory incursion into teasing out
what might be possible, a proo o concept,
set the stage or the second proposal, which
approached the imaging possibilities rom
the more applied angle, with which she had
become more amiliar in her interactions
with the various sta members who had
participated in the stand-up o MESA. It gave
me the exibility to be able to explore the
possibilities, Anderson comments about her
rst LDRD project. And at about the same time
period as the unding o her second LDRD
proposal, also came her hiring as a regular
sta member, a correlation that Anderson
perceives as connected i not causally related
at least in the sense that the quality o her
ideas and research and her willingness and
ability to orge collaborations were exemplary
o her current and potential uture va lue to her
organization and the Laboratories.
Anderson continues to make use o the
richness o expertise and cross-centercollaborations possible at Sandia. Based on
the exhibited potential o imaging techniques
such as low-energy electron microscopy
(LEEM), she has consulted with other teams
o Sandia scientists who might benet rom
its capabilities. Its really great to have these
meetings; its maybe a ew years down the
road that youll see the eect, she notes with
a sense o anticipation, expressing the belie
that Sandias richly va riegated environment
presents innumerable opportunities or
creative collaboration. She exhibits an
understated condence that the capabilities
that she is developing and validating with
LDRD support will oer an important asset
or microelectronics and optoelectronics
researchers and developers in years to come.
Finding a Mentor-Collaborator
Attuned to SerendipityBryan Kaehr
Describing this as an exciting time to be at
Sandia, and himsel as an individual attuned
to serendipity, ruman Postdoctoral Fellow
and Albuquerque native, Bryan Kaehr sees
himsel amid a burgeoning initiative at the
interace o biology and nanotechnology.
Bio-nano interdisciplinary research is,
quite obviously, not only in-progress at the
Laboratories, but it is also growing and
attracting the attention and energies o
creative young sta like Kaehr. Tese early-
career individuals are not only coming to seek
growth and career-development opportunities,
but they are also bringing with them unique
opportunities or this acet o Sandia LDRD-
unded research eorts.
Although invited to present a seminar on hi s
doctoral research that was, a lready, a bio-
nano initiative, Bryan was, at irst, somewhat
daunted by the ruman announcement,
which he perused on a bulletin-board
lyer at the University o exas (U),Austin. It appeared rom the lyer that the
requirements bar or the ellowship was
set rather high. But ater a one-on-one
meeting at which Je Brinker (page 38)
encouraged him to apply, Kaehr recognized
the opportunity to integrate his research
with that o Brinkers ingenious team and
ollowed through, irmly believing that his
unique protein lithography system could be
I thought it was a longshot. . but they said they wanted high
risk . . . It gave me exibility to be
able to explore the possibilities.
o both great i nterest and great potential
value to the Sandia research ongoing in
this arena. Echoing the sentiments o
other ruman applicants and awardees
like Anatole von Lillieneld (p. 17), Bryan
was looking or a laboratory oering the
reedom to pursue novelty, to investigate the
leading-edge, in this instance, the leading
edge o the leading edge, a multidisciplinary
scientiic ield in its inancy. he ruman,
and the associated LDRD -unded endeavors
in Brinkers group clearly presented such an
opportunity.
Building a better micro-box or cells in which
to live would be a completely pedestrian way
to describe this work, but both the approaches
and the questions posed extend ar beyond
such a mundane description. But both Kaehr
and Brinker, his Sandia project manager,
are approaching this nanomanipulation o
microenvironments rom slightly dierent
angles. Kaehr had published his technique or
laser-light-based manipulation
o proteins within a hydrogel
matrix so-called multiphoton
lithography one that allows
him to create a diversity o nano
and microenvironments that
are manipulable by physical
parameters such as pH (acidity)
and temperature. But these
environments are also biologically
signicant, because proteins are
bionanomachines o various types
(signalers, receivers, motors, and
enzymes, or example). Tus, incorporationo living cells into such a nano-abricated
proteinaceous environment makes this a
potentially interactive situation, in which the
cells can interact with and remodel this light-
abricated structure.
Coming rom his background as a
materials scientist, nano-manipulating
inorganic materials, Brinker, meanwhile
Creating dynamic cell enclosures by way o lit hography o protein hydrogels enables the trapping o single bacterial cell
upper, let), ollowed by accumulation o colonies o cells (a, third panel, and c. let panel). Each cell is an elongated rod. (
2008, National Academy of Sciences, USA; originally published in Kaehr, B. and J. Shear, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
page 8850-8854, 2008).
This is anexciting tim
be at Sandi
a ripe place
biology.
aaGroundLevelGroundLevel
TopTop
cc
bb
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
7/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
has nonetheless pursued a parallel path in
nano-constructing biologically compatible
environments, in his case, a composite
o inorganic silica and layered lipids (the
stu o biological membranes). Brinkers
team has demonstrated that living cells will
interact with and actively manipulate the
surrounding architecture.
Meanwhile, Kaehr has trapped and incubated
living cells i n micro-enclosures ormed by his
method. Hence, the marriage o these two
approaches may logically open up a myriad
o novel possibilities. At least two possible
research pathways loom, one more immediate,
the other more uturistic. More proximal are
investigations into cell signaling, undamental
questions abounding in signaling pathways that
appear to govern so-called quorum sensing
in bacteria by which a grouping o single-
celled organisms appear to sel-regulate as
though they were a multicellular organism.
Numerous signaling processes also await
clarication in higher organisms, or example,
the immune system, a liquid, d istributed
brain, representing a model system or study.
More uturistic are intentions to utilize cells as
modelers o nanomaterials; or example, one
could envision a bacterial cell, yeast cell, or
even a white blood cell becoming the creator
o circuitry on a silicon communications
chip. Once the stu o science iction, this
design potential is now not only conceivable,
but both Brinkers and Kaehrs systems
provide rational routes to such eventual
outcomes.
Te act that the two investigators are now
working together rather than separately one a distinguished Sandia sta member and
distinguished UNM proessor, the other an
early-career scientist is testament to the
possibilities inherent in the LDRD program and
the ruman ellowship. Kaehr speaks o Sandia
as a ripe place or biology. In his amazement
at the diversity and quality o science occurring
here, he predicts that the Laboratories will
develop more niches or people like me.
he ruman and the underpinning
philosophy o the LDRD program is clearly
a win-win or both Kaehr and Sandia. By
oering reedom to pursue cutting-edge
science in the company o astute, creative
colleagues, the Laboratories attracted a
young, creative researcher and potential
uture sta member, who brings with him an
innovative approach that both complements
and supplements ongoing work in this
remarkable new ield. Although Kaehr may
view his application or the ruman as
serendipitous, Brinkers active outreach to
creative young scientists, under the auspices
o the LDRD program is also exemplary o a
very wise investment by the DOE and Sandia
management in a LDRD program that makes
such collaborative cutting-edge science a
genuine possibility.
Creative OpportunityandStrong Leadership
Choosing the Creativity OptionJacques Hung Loui
We wish we had a program like LDRD to
oer you, said the voice on Jacques Louis
cell phone. Te phone call was rom a manager
at MIs Lincoln Laboratories, and the voice
had just oered him a highly coveted prize or
any graduating Ph.D. the opportunity to
conduct research as a sta member at one o
the premier physical science laboratories in
the world.
But, while standing in Bostons Logan Airport,about to board his return ight ater his
MI interview and a ew weeks prior to that
afrmational phone call rom MI, Jacques
had received what would turn out to be an even
more signicant call rom Sandia Vice-president
and Chie echnology Ofcer, Rick Stulen,
oering him through the LDRD Program
a President Harry S. ruman Fellowship. And it
was that call rom Stulen that took precedence,
Original design by Jacques Loui o a metal c
with periodic arrays o cells or controlling
electromagnetic radiation. Hung Loui 200
steered the course o Jacquess career. For, as
Jacques would explain to his MI solicitor,
his priority was creativity in order or him
to blossom as a scientist, he elt strongly that
creative space oered by the ruman ellowship,
the LDRD program, and the broad scope o
Sandia research eorts would best address his
aspirations. He had taken extra time in his
doctoral research so that he could pursue the
triad o experimental, numerical, and theoretical
approaches to electromagnetic radiation
scattering rom complex objects, and he elt that
the ruman Fellowship would enable him to
continue on all ronts, giving him reedom in
deciding an area o pursuit.
he MI caller sweetened the deal, oering
a signing bonus. But or Jacques, Sandia
was the best-kept secret in US science;
the breadth o globally and nationally
signiicant research unded under the
LDRD umbrella had already played its
magic on his thinking. He would pursue the
path that allowed him to create, innovate,
and collaborate, while charting a course
into the waters o national security in
the person o Sandias synthetic aperture
radar (SAR) technology. Most important
to Jacques were the bonds he rapidly
orged with his peers. He immediately
sensed that his Sandia mentor Billy Brock,
appreciated his work, and was antastically
encouraging, both scientiically and
personally. He exempliied, not only a
mentor, but a leader within a culture o
mutual respect, trust, and engineering
excellence at Sandia.
his culture o excellence and mutualrespect has convinced Jacques that he
has ound a home at Sandia. His ruman
LDRD involved a creative method or
controlling electromagnetic radiation
(light) by designing metal suraces with
periodic arrays o computationally designed
cells essentially elaborately conigured
apertures to allow active control o
signals or diverse applications sensors,
antennas,
and lenses,
to name
just a ew.
He credits
LDRD and
the support
by Brock and
manager Kurt
Sorensen or
making every
possible
eort in
his behal,
ensuring
that he
was never
isolated. As
his ruman
ellowship entered its inal year, Jacques
pitched a ollow-up idea to Sorensen
ater discussing it with several o his
peers and was rewarded as a member
o an LDRD-unded team, or which, as
a still-ruman Fellow, he could not serve
as principal investigator (PI). But this
allowed Jacques to pull
together a collaboration with
a team, whose PI, Bernd
Strassner, has become not
simply a ellow-scientist
whose ideas resonate with
Jacques, but also a riend
and an oicemate. With
distinct national security
implications, the research
in the arena o control o
electromagnetic radiation is,
in principle, related to Jacquesruman ellowship work.
Now a ull-ledged, cleared
sta member, Jacques will
be inishing his executive MBA at the
University o New Mexico, this year, and
is looking toward a uture in realms o
greater responsibility at Sandia. o me,
education is lie, says this budding young
. . . a cultof mutual
respect, tru
and engine
excellence
Sandia.
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
8/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
The reasonpeople come to
us for cyber is
that we have
more-innovati
research than
competitors, a
thats LDRD.
scientist, born near the Gobi desert.
Great leaders can see the goals o the
people around them, Jacques observes,
and even at this early phase o his own
career, it appears that he has the makings
o leadership, which the LDRD program is
nurturing.
Teamwork in AddressingNational Security Challenges
CompetitionDriving InnovationJonathan Margulies
Becoming an important, trusted young
sta member at a place hed never even
heard o: Tis outcome or Jonathan
Margulies reects the broad reach and great
accomplishments o Sandia and Sandia
LDRD, even i that reach is requently silent
or, rather, concealed within the experience
o individuals. In this instance, and by
luck, Jonathans roommate at Cornell had
worked, as a student, or a scant six weeks at
Sandia under Joselyn Gallegos; yet even that
short stint had been sufcient to convince
the roommate that it was an interesting,
productive, and high-quality environment.
aking the initiative as he approached the
completion o hi s Masters in Computer
Science, Jonathan investigated, and indeed
ound himsel recruited by Gallegos. During
his visit/interview process, he discovered
common interests and attitudes with manager
Bob Hutchinson, on both a personal and a
proessional level. With the opportunity to
work in either Caliornia or Albuquerque,
Jonathan chose the latter, despite other
personal preerences, and to a great extent
based upon his perception o the interpersonal
potential he saw through Hutchinson and other
members o his prospective team.
Ultimately, the payo was quite worthwhile,
Margulies nding himsel amid exciting
research opportunities within a vibrant,
exciting place to work. Te bigger
laboratory with a smaller prole had
suddenly opened up beore him, displaying
broad vistas o possibility, possibilities that
were intimately tied to LDRD unding to
examine undamental aspects o inormation
science, as well as to participate in the
development o new analytical tools. What
may sound like an overall simple challenge
protect critical inormation resources
can actually be astoundingly complex,
when one considers the intricacies o that
challenge. And aside rom the discovery
and implementation o mechanisms to
accomplish that protective initiative, there is
the accompanying, and perhaps even more
daunting challenge o how best to assess theresults o ones implementations.
Jonathans dual skills as computer scientist
and writer quickly made him an invaluable
asset, as his programmatic duties in code
development were supplemented by his
documentation o both his own work and that
o colleagues. In this role, he was avored with
a broad view o the research and development
activity in his group and organization. It also
permitted him to quickly develop a network
o trusted relationships.
Tese skills and developmental potential soon
came into play as Sandia Laboratory Fellow
Jim Gosler decided to increase t he
concentration o resources into thi s arena
o inormation protection, and he ca lled or
ideas worthy o LDRD unding. Trough Bob
Hutchinson, a competitive set o interviews
ensued to establish project leadership. Jonathan
was chosen to lead one o two teams that
would compete and co-evolve, and, ultimately,
he became the LDRDs principal investigator.
Initially a short, late-start project, the work
ourished, and within the circle o relationship
that he had developed, Margulies and several
colleagues submitted a second proposal that
LDRD unded or a two-year timerame.
Competition drives innovation, Margulies
reects, but there was also a real camaraderie
within that competitive atmosphere.
Within the context o this LDRD work, the
team and the group has engaged a number o
summer interns, and Jonathan is amazed at the
talent. Teres a great pipeline o young talent
available to Sandia, he reects. Remarkably,
in a group where over hal the technical sta
members are under the age o 30, the odds are
that this critical area o Sandia mission work
will continue to be stimulated to innovation by
resh young minds. However, in reecting on
the competitive process engendering the LDRD
success, Margulies emphasizes that each o
the relatively young teams in the competition
had an experienced senior sta member as an
advisor/mentor. In a sense, the situation revealsan orderly generational transition, whereby in
a eld such as inormation science which
expands daily, by leaps and bounds knowledge
turnover must be accompanied by an inusion o
new talent that both inorms and is inormed by
existing, experienced sta. With the discipline,
by denition, always poised at the leading edge,
LDRD becomes a natural vehicle or acilitating
not only steps orward at that leading edge, but
also the intergenerational collaborations that are
critical to creative risk-taking.
Jonathan believes that LDRD has inspired
our work or customers
to new heights. An
important guiding idea is
the understanding that
seemingly innocuous bits
o source code in di erent
parts o a system can
sometimes combine to
create dangerous cyber-
vulnerabilities. Margulies
sees Sandias work in
unearthing, assessing
and protecting against
such critical i normation
vulnerabilities
particularly in the orm
o a Sandia-developed
training tool as
ultimately transerrable to and hopeully
adopted by every ederally unded research
and development center (FFRDC).
he reason people come to us or cyber
is that we have more-innovative research
than our competitors, and thats LDRD.
Clearly that attitude has both irmly engaged
Jonathan Margulies talents and shown
him a path to urther developing them
and sharing them with a broader Federal
constituency.
Networking to
Expand CapabilitiesEncouraged to Try AgainChris San Marchi
With an MI education and research
experiences in metal oams and intermetallics,
Chris San Marchi was ju st a bit out o his
comort zone when he accepted a job at Sandia
that brought him responsibility or metal
A representation o the creation o a dangerous
vulnerability through combination o disparate,
seemingly innocuous eatures in various parts o
source code, or various parts o a system.
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
9/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
orging. Yet his experience with alloys and his
amiliarization with the mission needs o his
organization provoked his mind to consider
approaches that might both challenge his
scientic acumen and serve Sandias multiple
missions in gas transer systems, both military-
and civi lian-related.
So ater a ew years at the Laboratories, Chris
experience with aluminum alloys led him to
submit an LDRD proposal. And although the
creative idea invited a proposal, the proposal
itsel did not succeed in gaining unding.
However, as part o the possible eedback
mechanisms structured into the LDRDprocess, the selection committee encouraged
him that the idea was sound and worthy, and it
encouraged him to reapply.
I was pleasantly surprised and somewhat
overwhelmed, says Chris o that second
attempt, successul in securing three-year
project unding to experimentally investigate
and model the undamental properties o
nanostructured aluminum alloys. San Marchi
pressed orward in an environment where he
had not yet had either the longevity or the time
to become associated with a signicant raction
o his peers. But as the mother o invention,
necessity, in this instance, ueled collaboration.
People knew we had an LDRD program, he
relates, in recalling how the unding gave him
local visibility.
It gave me the opportunity to interact with
other sta on tough scientic problems,
San Marchi comments on a common theme
pervading LDRD unding recipients, namely
an encouragement to collaboration. In anatmosphere such as Sandia, the program
has particular value, particular strength.
For in taking on a research responsibility,
a sta member knows that gaps in his or
her expertise can be readily lled through
collaboration. As echoed by others (p. 25),
there are so many Ph.D.-level experts to be
ound at Sandia, that a principal investigator
(PI) with LDRD unding would be oolish to
not tap such a rich ont in seeking to ll those
expertise gaps. And science has become so
multidisciplinary and so complex with the
continual addition o scientic knowledge,
that to approach the type o vanguard
research that characterizes LDRD is quite
likely to entail knowledge rom related
disciplines, o which no one individual is likely
to have mastery.
So it was that San Marchi developed
relationships that not only assisted his own
LDRD interrogation o nanostructured metal
alloys, but also brought him into contact with
both microscopists and other metallurgists
at Sandia, who reciprocally sought his
expertise on their projects this cross-
ertilization both within and across disciplines
another common theme acilitating career
development and enrichment or LDRD PIs
and sta.
Nanostructured aluminum alloys show
some remarkable mechanical properties. For
example, they exhibit strength that is two or
more times greater than conventional solid-
solution strengthened aluminum alloys; and
their nanostructure remains intact at very
high temperatures, up to 80% o the melting
point o the alloy, an unusual characteristic
or nanostructured alloys. Tere are two
important spinos o these properties. Te
rst implication is obviously or structural
applications, that is the abrication o lighter
vehicles and aircrat with greater cruising
range, and moreover, that would be more-
energy efcient to power. But second,
preliminary studies suggest that these
alloys are resistant to a phenomenon knownas hydrogen-assisted racture, in which
hydrogen acilitates cracking as it does
in most structural steels. Since they appear
resistant to hydrogen-assisted racture at
pressures up to 20,000 pounds per square
inch (psi), nanostructured aluminum alloys
are potentially valuable as containment
materials or high-pressure storage o gaseous
hydrogen or utilization in hydrogen uel cells.
rue to the projects LDRD roots, the
issues that San Marchi and his co-workers
pursued were undamental: investigating
the underlying structural and metallurgical
underpinnings o the
properties o these
alloys; they pose
the hypothesis that
segregation o magnesium
to the grain boundaries o
nanostructured aluminum
plays an important role
in dening these unique
properties.
San Marchis work has
brought lots o industrial
olks to Sandia, which
San Marchi nds really
exciting and rewarding, and has brought
external unding to his work. And o course,
given that encouragement, Chris is grappling
with two new LDRD ideas that would
explore undamental materials issues in the
gas-transer system arena, but with broad
applicability to national energy security. Tis
time, however, the process has taken on a
slightly dierent shape, in that with co-workers
already allied and potential collaborators
identied, San Marchi has assembled a small
team in each case. I have some hope or this
next LDRD, he reveals, despite the act that
he also regrets having not ullled all o his
aspirations or the one just ended. But that
admission rames a key personal aspect o
LDRD PIs that also claries a contribution to
their development as sta members at Sandia.
When one has the wherewithal, the personal
honesty, to understand that all has not beenaccomplished, that scientic and technical
questions remain unresolved, and one is willing
to push harder against those boundaries o
scientic uncertainty, the reward can be great
not only or scientic knowledge itsel and
ones peers in the discipline, but or ones own
personal integrity and capabilities as a scientist
or engineer. Chris San Marchi appears to
exempliy such integrity.
It gave me theopportunity to
interact with
other staff on
tough scienti
problems.Transmission electron micrograph o a nanostructured aluminum-
magnesium alloy.
500 nm500 nm
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
10/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
Computational Potency toModel Engineering Solutions
An Inspiring Breadtho ScienceO. Anatole von Lilieneld-Toal
What does one do when aced with an
engineering dilemma underpinned by the
undamental science o material properties? In
the past, the only answer was to hypothesize
a direction or scientic experimentation
that might bring one closer to an engineeringsolution, then design an experiment to test
the hypothesis. Hypothesize, test, evaluate
outcome, repeat. And repeat and repeat and
repeat, unless one is extremely brilliant or
extremely ortunate.
But what i the engineering solution holds
a key to improving a crisis such as the one
acing our nation and the world in the area
o renewable energy and climate change?
Te question then becomes, is there a aster
way to do this, by predicting the best course
or experimentation? ruman postdoctoral
Fellow Anatole von Lillieneld believes that
better way involves computationally devising
accurate chemical structure-materials property
relationships th rough multiscale descriptions
involving Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics.
For someone o his disposition, Sandia
is a very attractive place to be, oering
the opportunity to collaborate with very
capable scientists to potentially devisea sotware tool allowing us to routinely
design valuable materials that actually get
used. For example, the Sandia solar-thermal
tower employs a molten salt to store t hermal
energy rom sunlight, later releasing it to
drive a mechanical engine that turns an
electrical generator, thus converting sunlight
to electricity. Te salt can be heated to 600
C, but at the top o the tower, temperatures
great opportunitiesfor collaboration . . .
great facilities and
the freedom to
use them.
above 1000 C can be reached; problematically
the salt decomposes, losing its chemical
structure above 600C. Additionally, currently
deployed salt ormulations remain liquid
and thus able to ow through the systems
pipes only above 100 C. Tis means that
to prevent the salt rom solidiying within
the systems pipes, it must be heated to the
boiling point o water at night. Tis consumes
energy and money, unnecessarily. What i
a salt could be ound that remained liquid
at room temperature, requiring minimal
heating to remain uid, and one that could
also sustain temperatures above 1000 C
without decomposing, thereby absorbing the
maximum amount o solar thermal energy
available at the top o the solar tower? Such
a material would greatly increase the energy
efciency o the solar-to-electricity energy
transormation, thereby decreasing the
overall cost o power production.
o an experimentalist, this is a thoroughly
daunting task because, based upon whatever
chemical characteristics are available in
the literature, one would have to make an
educated guess about which salts might
oer the desired properties, then set up a
separate series o experiments-with-controls
or each possibility. But with computational
modeling, von Lilieneld not only attempts
to predict desired properties directly rom
chemical structural, bonding and quantum
considerations, but also to numerically
anticipate the trends o these properties or
varying the materials chemical composition.
Bridging statistical mechanics and quantum
chemistry, this eld is barely two-decades
old and is, by denition, interdisciplinary,involving mathematics, computer science,
and chemical physics. Tere are but a handul
o research groups with the wherewithal and
knowhow necessary to ruitully pursue this
type o bottom-up computational design
o materials. With experience at the Swiss
Federal Institute o echnology, UCLA and
NYU, von Lillieneld is among a small group
o uniquely qualied designers.
With that background, von Lilieneld was
seeking a way to pursue his ideas in a ertile
landscape with the requisite computational
resources allowing him to ocus on
science,
without
the other
distractions that
an academic
positions would
impose He
communicated
with colleagues
at both Los
Alamos and
Sandia. Te
ability to
explore new
ideas and
approaches, in
the context o LDRD unding was decisive in
bringing him to Sandia, particularly against the
backdrop o the breadth o science at Sandia,
which he ound inspiring.
Te opportunity to collaborate with
experimentalists has played a major role
in his contentment about his position. A
signicant outcome o von Lilienelds work
is reected in the acceptance by UCLA o his
proposal to chair a three-month computer
materials and bio-design workshop in spring
2011. With Sandias great opportunities or
collaboration, and its great acilities and the
reedom to use them, perhaps Anatole will
continue his association with the laboratories
ater the completion o his ellowship, at
least on some level, and he is currently
conceptualizing thermal redox-catalysisthat could benet eorts to economically
produce molecular hydrogen rom water,
or to engineer a sunlight driven reaction
or approaching the issue o carbon dioxide
activation to carbon monoxide or liquid
uels synthesis. Tis collaborative modeling-
experimental approach may well set the stage
or a novel solution to this key national-
security challenge.
Quantum-mechanical probability distribution to predict the eect on the redox potential o a polymer due to
annihilation o an Hydrogen atom.
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
11/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
Skepticismwithout Risk-AvoidanceLearning to GrowKaren Waldrip
For someone who back-doored into Sandia,
Karen Waldrip quickly ound an oasis within
a desert rom a graduate program in
balmy Florida to high, dry Albuquerque and
that oasis o terriic technology talent that
she discovered working on materials science
at Sandia. Go learn to grow (crystals),
her thesis advisor recommended, and
Karen ended up learning, absorbing, and
contributing much more than that, nine-
years later, winning a 2008 LDRD Award or
Excellence or her novel method o growing
nitride crystals.
Waldrip ound hersel awed by the attitude
o that grouping o Sandia materials
scientists whom she irst encontered. I
you could buy a piece o equipment to do an
experiment, then we didnt
need to do that experiment,
she quips about those
scientists and engineers,
the attitude being that their
interest was in pushing the
envelope, treading i nto the
undiscovered territory. his
is exactly the attitudinal
disposition that incubates
LDRD idea and successul
LDRD project proposals, and
rom the beginning, Waldrip
ound this attitude exciting
and admirable.
When Karens research
hit equipment roadblocks,
she began to interact with
members o the Solid State
Lighting Grand Challenge
LDRD, presenting bits
and pieces o her idea or growing bulk
nitride crystals. All the mechanisms or
nitride growth necessitated extremes o
temperature and pressure within reactors,
making the process slow and expensive.
But Waldrip had a notion about something
dierent, and she drew a chuckle or two
rom more-experienced colleagues with
notions about electrochemically growing
nitrides the materials most widely used
in light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or solid
state lighting at lower temperatures and
pressures.
Everyone was skeptical, but they d idnt
say, dont do it, Waldrip distinctly recalls.
A ew months later, she grew the secondlargest nitride crystal in a test tube at
atmospheric pressure. Certainly, the crystal
was imperect, but it demonstrated proo-o-
principle.
As might be expected, there were job oers
rom private industry as well as rom Los
Alamos National Laborotory, but Waldrip
saw the latter as a bit too long-term
LDRD allowsyou to pursue new
ideas . . . see
whats possible.
and theoretically driven. It was Sandias
engineering and electrochemistry expertise
that turned her toward the Power Sources
echnology group and thereore retained
her as a Sandia asset. Above all, she saw the
opportunity to learn more electrochemistry
rom a diverse and highly skilled peer group.
She ound advice and management support
rom Te Science echnology and Engineering
(S&E) Strategic Management Unit. Tey
pointed Waldrip toward LDRD and the Seniors
Investment Area. Tis collection o senior
Sandia scientists liked her idea and provided
late-start seed unding in 20042005, then
extended it or a second year.
his initial u nding gave Karen the
opportunity to change the opinions o the
nay-sayers, allowing her to demonstrate
possibility. And it acclimated her to the
notion that LDRD unding was indeed aimed
at ideas and projects such as hers, which
were treading that leading edge, looking out
rom the terra irma o the what is to the
sometimes misty horizons o what might
be, encouraging the risky path.
LDRD allows you to pursue new ideas, to go
where it takes you; see whats possible. Nor
does Waldrip see any discontinuity between
Sandias past its weapons underpinning
and this uturistic view o evolutionary novelty.
So much spino technology comes rom the
weapons program, she notes, perceiving the
vast ingenuity that has been required to design,
maintain, and modiy weapons components.
Outside agencies have added their recognitiono Karens work to the LDRD award. Her
proposal to the National Energy echnology
Laboratory (NEL) was ranked number one
in the agencys entire portolio in 2007, and
it unded her work subsequent to the LDRD
projects ending. Funding has also come rom
the DOE Ofce o Energy Efciency and
Renewable Energy (EERE) in the area o power
electronics.
Karen is, however also incubating several
new ideas in pursuit o her research
goals, and she is, in tu rn, loating several
new LDRD proposals in pursuit o these
innovative notions. She notes that about
1% o total global energy expenditure is
currently invested in ammonia production
or soil ertilizers. In her mind, this
astounding igure demands a broader
examination o this chemistry, and she
sees Sandia as positioned to pursue this
challenge, which, in an era o energy
shortages, is clearly an important national
and global consideration.
In the meantime, a quite promising
partnership appears to be evolving between
GNOEM
Systems, a Bay
Area startup,
and Sandia
in the area o
crystal growth,
with GNOEMs
intentions, or
the present,
to supply the
industry with
substrate
waers, and the
partnership
making great
advances. And looking back at Karen
Waldrips initial back-door entry into the
Sandia research community, one marvels
at how much her mandate to learn to grow
crystals has ramiied i nto a lush garden o
new growth opportunities. From the initial
support and mentoring by experiencedSandians to the prescience o her irst
unding by the Seniors Council, to her
award-winning LDRD project, the return on
those investments or both Sandia and the
nation is quite evident. And the growth and
ramiication o her career at Sandia has been
illustrative o how LDRD i nvestments can
tender crucial support or ingenuity even
in the ace o skepticism.
Photoluminescent gallium nitride crystallites grown by the
electrochemical solution growth method.
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
12/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
EstablishingBio-Nano Credibility
Nanomotors rom NatureGeorge Bachand
One o the most exciting areas o research
endeavor or Sandia and its LDRD
investments is undoubtedly the intersection
o biotechnology and nanotechnology, and
George Bachand has been working at t hat
intersection or a good portion o his career.
Viruses are certainly one o Natures most-
ecient examples o nanoengineering, and
coming out o a background in plant virology,
Bachand, was, rom the beginnings o his
career, interested in the question o how
biological nanosystems could play a role in
engineering new nanotechnologies.
Proering the view that Sandia is a well-kept
secret, (p. 10), Bachand was ortunate to have
attended a seminar discussing some o Sandias
nanotechnology work. Ti s serendipitous event
piqued his curiosity, and ater an exchange o
inormation, Sandia oered him a sta position
in 2001. His expertise immediately became
invaluable on some LDRD projects involving
surace unctionalization o biological
molecules. During a stint as a research
associate at Cornell University, Bachand
had become interested in biological motors,
ascinating proteins that, powered by cellular
chemical energy (AP catalysis), can perorm
mechanical work while attached to other
biomolecules, thereby exerting a nanoscale
orce to create motion inside or outside cells.
It was quite a relie to not have to write a30-page proposal, Bachand says o the LDRD
submission process, one that allowed him to
learn the crat o how to write successully
(see also page p. 40) while working his way
into mission-relevant projects at Sandia, by
rst serving on the projects o others until
he elt prepared to move into the role o
principal investigator (PI) on an LDRD project.
Ultimately, his work on a team studying the
utilization o biomotors or the assembly o
unctional nanocomposites made the cover o
Advanced Materials in December 2008.
Bachand has been PI on a number o LDRD
projects aimed at the accrual o knowledge on
motor protein applications in nanotechnology,
and he has gradually i ntegrated his work
with collaborators outside Sandia, under the
umbrella o the Sandia-Los A lamos Center
or Integrated Nanotechnology (CIN), so
that they can ultimately be used in ully
integrated nanosystems in a multitude o
national security initiatives. Te best-studiedmotor protein, o late, is a motor known as
kinesin, which ports material inside cells,
moving along nanodimensional tracks called
microtubules. For example, when measured
rom the cells main body to the end o it
longest nerve ber, some nerve cells in our
bodies may reach lengths o two eet or more,
and to move materials rom one end o a cell to
another requires rapid motion by these ki nesin
Scanning electron photomicrograph o an ring-like composite
nanomaterial consisting o biological microtubules and semico
nanoparticles (quantum dots).
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
13/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
motors. Bachands studies entail a variety o
combinations o these biological components
with light-generating nanocomponents
such as quantum dots (QDs). By analogy, in
certain sh, these motor-track combinations
move bio-pigmented crystals around inside
cells, changing their local concentrations
within a sh s skin to eect color changes and
camouage.
Tere are clear national security applications
o these systems in areas such as active
camouaged clothing or the
military (where the clothing
would respond to changes in
surroundings by automatically
adapting its coloration), as well
as in ultraminiaturized sensor
technologies, in which the assembly
o miniature components on the
nanoscale would greatly benet
rom the use o biological motors.
Sandia showed a commitment
and interest in this area, Bachand
points out, and LDRD provided
a vehicle or him to gradually
develop projects based both on his existing
expertise and new expertise t hat he acquired
by stretching into novel areas related to those
he brought with him to Sandia. As a result,
DARPA engaged George in a multi-year project
that ultimately involved a partnership with the
Naval Research Laboratory, the University o
Florida, Albert Einstein College o Medicine,
and the Swiss Federal Institute o echnology.
We wouldnt have been positioned well i
LDRD hadnt given us a track record in thisarea. Echoed by others (pp. 27), this track
record theme is an important LDRD outcome.
Additionally, there was a great degree o
student involvement in Bachands research,
with students using the experience to catapult
them into their own post-baccalaureate
experiences. Bachand describes one such
student whose research experience set
her apart rom the crowd, in obtaining her
acceptance to the University o Caliornia
at Berkeley graduate school, a prestigious
molecular biology program. Another o
Bachands undergrads gained acceptance as
a medical student at Johns Hopkins School
o Medicine, again, a top-ight medical
program. raining students has always been
a passion o mine, Bachand admits, and he
praises the CIN model as a great mechanism
or both developing ideas in nanotechnology
and a vehicle or both researcher and student
development.
Recently, Bachand has expanded his work
with QDs into an LDRD-unded study o
nanotoxicity, that is, investigating whether
or not QDs and other commonly used
engineered nanomaterials such as carbon
nanotubes have signicant biotoxicity. Given
the growing spate o initiatives proposing to
use these components both experimentally
and therapeutically (drug delivery) in humans,
and which are already incorporated in certain
products such as sunscreen, such studies
are essential to assessments o human and
environmental impact.
With the expanded ocus o his research into
arenas that include health considerations or
both individuals and population clearly
national security issues Bachand is
expanding his research unding horizons
beyond LDRD and DOEs Ofce o Science.
Although he recognizes the National Institutes
o Health (NIH) as a tough sell, he is among
a growing cadre o LDRD-u nded researchers
who are entertaining NIH unding as a genuine
possibility or reality.
Clearly, sta members like George Bachand do
not perceive any unding stream as unattainable,
but rather perceive Sandia, through its LDRD
program and ollow-on unding, as continuing to
make inroads into both the undamental mysteries
o cellular unction and the pathways by which
biological nanomachines can be employed as
genuinely integrated nanotechnologies with those
We wouldnt
ave been
ositioned well
f LDRD hadnt
iven us a track
ecord in this
rea.
designed by human engineers to accomplish
uturistic outcomes that once were considered
science ction.
An EntrepreneurialTest-Flight Returns to SandiaAmong a Cadre o ExpertsMary Craword
Solid-state lighting (SSL) beyond the LEDs
in our nearly ubiquitous cell phones and mp3
players is the promise o lighting homes,
ofce buildings, city streets, and even Olympic
venues. But to do so requires a undamentally
deeper and more-comprehensive
understanding o the semiconductor materials
o which these devices are composed. And
beyond simply lighting, the potential
applications o these semiconductors in
other electronics and optoelectronics areas
are plentiul: non-interceptible, short-range
communications, biological and chemical
threat detection.
Recently asked to write a review o the eld,
Mary Craword, at mid-career, has become
a prominent gure in the optoelectronics
materials science community, and she is
enthusiastic about applauding the role o LDRD
support in the development o her career.
First and most directly tied to Sandias LDRD
mission or DOE, she is clear about LDRD as
one o the ew avenues or doing higher-risk
work, and based upon the uncertainty actor
and the potential benets rom optimized
SSL, the optoelectronics o semiconductormaterials is an excellent example o high-risk,
potentially high-payo research. In general, the
corporate arena will not or cannot engage in
this type o ri sk. But having spent two years
on entrepreneurial leave, Mary has a rst-hand
perspective on this corporate-risk topic.
Companies appreciate us doing the arther-
out work, which they cant or wont do because
it could adversely impact their reactors
or interrupt their product line, Craword
observes. And in the SSL arena, companies
such as Philips Lumileds have been engaged
rom the beginning, ollowing progress and
at times, partnering on some o Sandias
SSL R&D. Tis ideal partnership in which
or-prot lighting manuacturers remain
continually engaged with their national-
laboratory colleagues is made ar more ruitul,
as Craword suggests, by the act that the
LDRD program adheres to its mission mandate
rom DOE to pursue high-risk research at the
leading edge, a act oten ignored or overlooked
by LDRD critics, who sometimes incorrectly
analogize high-risk research as akin to playing
in sandboxes. Nothing could be arther rom
the truth in Ma ry Crawords opinion.
Moreover, beyond the high-risk science, the
LDRD legislation includes a mandate to
maintain the vitality o the laboratories , oneimplication being to develop and retain sta.
On this point, Craword is equally clear:
LDRD unding has allowed her to pursue
science that captivates her interest, and
stimulates her creativity. It has a lso ostered
the development o an entire spectrum o her
personal capabilities that have allowed her to
grow rom a postdoctoral research associate
in 1993 to a productive, respected member in
White light (center o photo) produced by the mi xing o
light rom multicolor LEDs (photo courtesy of Professor
E. F. Schubert).
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
14/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
her eld, who attracts invitations to author
articles and consult on new initiatives. For
LDRD is very much, in Crawords view, how
a new sta member learns to w rite proposals,
bring together a team, and present his or her
ideas to peers or review and scrutiny. Soon
ater her rst stint as principal investigator
on an LDRD project, she was
asked to become a thrust
leader or a portion o the
extensive and successul
MicroChemLab project, to
develop a compact, short-wave
vertical cavity surace emitting
laser (VCSEL). It was the rst
time I was directly exposed to
such a diversity o olks in other
elds, she recalls. It required
her to ormulate presentations
to upper management that
encouraged cross-disciplinary
collaboration, and spurred her
to take the risk o entrepreneurial leave, as
senior scientist and director o R&D or a small
startup. And in some sense, her LDRD research
experience both acilitated and permitted that
path. I had no concept o what it was like to
work in a corporate environment, she observes,
and the experience provided perspective on
the cost-savings and yield, production aspects
that companies especially small ones
must attend to.
Many companies, especially start-ups, cant
support advanced modeling capabilities,
Craword also emphasizes, commenting on
the astounding capabilities o a laboratory like
Sandia, where a great percentage o LDRD
projects include both experimental andmodeling/simulation initiatives in parallel.
Nor does Mary u nderplay Sandia
collaborations with academic partners. I
always wanted to collaborate with him, she
says o Rensselaer Polytechnic Institutes
(RPI) Proessor Fred Schubert, a pioneer in
optoelectronics. She credits the national
laboratoryacademic partnership, National
Institute or Nanoengineering (NINE) as
one o the avenues to that collaboration, its
educational emphasis important to her, as
she now inds hersel at a point in her career
where she derives great satisaction rom
mentoring young researchers. LDRD is a
great vehicle or early-career development
and a great way to get postdocs involved in
research.
Echoing the comments o others (pp. 23
and 27), Mary comments on the way LDRD-
unded projects lay the groundwork,
paving the way or u nding rom DOEs
Oice o Energy E iciency and Renewable
Energy (EERE). We write proposals with
credibility, she asserts, because the record
o scholarly publications and presentations
deriving rom LDRD projects establish that
expertise and agencies such as EERE and
DARPA want to see some proo o concept
beore they will und ollow-on work. And
beyond LEDs, Mary sees smart lighting, with
communication aspects such as lights that
permit two-way communication interactions
with emergency vehicles and even more-
remarkable applications o her work such
as probing and manipulating (or sleep and
health beneit) human circadian rhythms
as uture horizons to be investigated.
Im so spoiled, here, Mary relects,
commenting on the availability o expert-level
peers in other ields at Sandia; i I dont know
something, I go to a Ph.D.level expert at
Sandia. Companies dont typically have that
degree o sta diversity. hat commentary
ocuses a telephoto lens on the value o a
national laboratory like Sandia particularlyits cutting-edge LDRD Program research
or US competitiveness in the global
marketplace. As recently emphasized by the
president, the United States must regain that
global leadership, and it is that corporate-
national laboratory-academic partnership
that can lead the way. By helping to develop
the careers o researchers like Craword, the
LDRD program is helping to ensure that the
return to US global S& preeminence can
become reality.
Gaining Preeminencein Clean-Water Initiatives
Collaborations in Pursuit o a GlobalChallenge
Randall Cygan
Water water every where . . . but nary a drop
to drink. Tis misquote o ColeridgesRime
of the Ancient Marinerhas been, lately, more
prophetic than anyone would have imagined.
For on a living planet whose individual
organisms tend to run to compositions o
about 70% water, by weight, much o that water
has become or was already contaminated
by dissolved substances such as metal salts.
Tis is less o a problem or certain plants,
bacteria, and ungi, which possess varying
degrees o salt-tolerance, but or humans,
potable water, that is, suitable or consumption,
must be relatively ree o heavy metals and
certain organic contaminants, but also cannot
contain signicant amounts o what might be
considered relatively harmless dissolved salts
such as table salt, sodium chloride.
Most people recognize that we cannot live by
drinking seawater, the problem being osmotic
pressure. Te end result o this disparity is that
our tissues actually lose water to seawater, by
osmosis the net result, dehydration.
o become potable, seawater and the large
number o worldwide underground aquiers,which oten contain expansive water
supplies, must be desalinated reduced
in salt concentration. And with the ever
growing planetary disparity between supply
and demand o potable water, the issue o
desalination/purication o these water
sources is a growing concern. Hence, quite
understandably, Sandia LDRD has unded
a number o cutting-edge approaches to
. .how a newtaff member
earns to write
roposals, bring
ogether a team,
and present his or
er ideas . . .
desalination technologies, and, or many years,
Randall Cygan has been a leader in pursuit
o understanding the undamental science
underpinning the interaction o water and salts
with other materials rom which desalination
membranes are constructed (reverse osmosis
[RO] membranes are one example). What
distinguishes Cygans career is not only his
dedication to the science, but also his ability
to pursue new directions while establishing
collaborations ocused on nding solutions.
In Cygans case, such collaborations have not
simply maniested as by magic; in stead, he has
created space or them in his career in several
ways, most notably by the willingness to
accept the challenge o applying his scientic
expertise in a new eld such as environmental
physical chemistry, and by increasing his
understanding o potential collaborative
endeavors, such as by expanding his knowledge
o biotechnology through course work at the
University o New Mexico. With unding rom
the Ofce o Basic Energy Sciences and LDRD,
Cygan has translated this combination into
a career rich with rewards. About a decade
ago, an LDRD Ofce-Harvard University
Structure o water molecules in the nano-sized channels o a ze
material as obtained rom molecular dynamics simulation.
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
15/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
collaboration put him in contact with an
environmental study using atomic orce
microscopy examining limestone (calcium
carbonate) d issolution and its
eect on monuments, both
o antiquity, such as Mayan
ruins, and o US culture, such
as monuments in Washington,
DC. Because this entailed a oray
into quantication o the action
o bacteria, this constituted a
stretch into the lie sciences
or Cygan, and marked a new
unding niche or his uture
work, namely environmental
chemistry.
Part o the impetus or this
Harvard-Sandia interaction was
the Sandia Campus Executive
Program, unded through the
LDRD Ofces Strategic Partnerships investment
area. Cygan applauds this program or its benets
in helping students, promoting collaborations
with aculty, and helping move his own career in
new directions. A subsequent Campus Executive
motivated collaboration with University o
Notre Dame brought ve years o unding or
an environmental molecular sciences initiative
studying undamental processes entailed in
molecular contamination o soils, with bacterial
processes again at the oreront. Tis brought
Cygan additional experience and expertise and,
moreover, allowed him to apply his knowledge o
vibrational spectroscopy to zero-in on water and
its interaces with other materials.
Such interacial water studies became the ocus
o a large LDRD project, w ith numerous Sandiasta involved, and o which Cygan served as
one o our technical leads. Te project initially
assembled a workshop on the topic, drawing
about 60 participants, a select group o whom
became collaborators in the interacial water
LDRD. Now becoming established as a leader
in this area, Sandias water initiative drew
additional unding rom Congress. Subsequent
collaborations eventuated with the Bureau o
Reclamation and with the University o Illinois
(UI) National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored
Water CAMPWS (Center o Advanced Materials
or Water Purication o Water with Systems).
It all came out o LDRD, asserts Cygan about
this ruitul collaborative work; they would have
walked away i they hadnt seen the scholarly
publications rom Sandia. A memorandum
o understanding (MOU) now exists between
UI and Sandia, and according to Cygan, the
water CAMPWS sees Sandia as representing
DOE and t he National Laboratories in water
issues. Cygan also credits Senior Manager John
Merson or recognizing the need or a scientic
underpinning to examine the undamental
issues in membrane technologies, without which
science it would be difcult, i not impossible, to
improve the technologies. Te key issue here
is energy efciency: since it requires energy to
move salinated water through nanostructured
membrane water-selective pores, a deeper
scientic understanding may enable the abrication
o materials that will require a lower energy
expenditure during desalination. Add the problem
o membrane ouling through biolm ormation,
that is, growth o microorganisms on the
membrane surace, and one begins to appreciate
the scope o this challenge.
We need undamental science, and we need it
now, says Cygan, whose 2008 LDRD Award or
Excellence attests to the quality o his work during
a career progression that has led him to a position
o major player in a eld that was once possibly not
even on his list o science-career choices.
Modeling and Managing rom Petroleum to Proteins
Seamless TransitionsGrant Heelfnger
From the computational modeling o the
chemical physics o uids to the Sandia biouels
initiative such is the scope o the scientic
transition encompassed in the Sandia career
o Grant Heelnger. Moreover, in reecting
on what might seem to be twists and turns, but
what really eels more like a smooth, evolving
ow, Heelnger is unremitting i n his praise o
LDRD unding as the transitional acilitator:
I you look at my career path, I wouldnt be
here . . . or wouldnt have done what I did
without LDRD.
Arriving at Sandia a s a resource or petroleum
chemistry, in an initiative investigating oil and
gas storage, Grant discovered LDRD almost
by accident. Tis portal into LDRD unding
allowed Heelnger to consider the possibility
that his background, indeed his doctoral
work building sotware codes or molecular
dynamics, could be valuable in support o
several Laboratory missions involving gas
storage and absorption. He developed a code
that modeled molecular diusion under
conditions o a chemical potential gradient
through macromolecular assemblages, or
example, membranes or separating racemic
mixtures and drug d iusion through biological
membranes. Tese molecular-dynamics
modeling initiatives became cooperative eorts
with industrial partners, such as DuPont
and Bristol Myers Squibb, and ultimately led
to the LADERA variation o the LAMMPS
molecular dynamics code, released by Sandia
(and updated regularly) into public domain.
Some o the simulation work involved aging o
components in weapons s ystems, a key aspect
o stockpile stewardship.
With Grants background in writing code or
the precursors to massively parallel computers,
the advent o the ASCI project providedanother opportunity or career development.
In this instance, Heelngers experience
made him a logical candidate or a position as
ounding manager o the ASCI computational
material dynamics program.
During the late 1990s, hi s Grants path
inexorably orked into the lie sciences, as
interactions with academia were received by
Sandia upper management as the signal to
seriously plunge into lie science research.
With his material dynamics modeling expertise,
Grant became one o three logical department
managers to manage this eort in the materials
dynamics o biological systems.
LDRD was the cradle that nurtured thisinitiative, Grant unambivalently oers. With
clearly, no track record, and hence no readily
available unding rom other sources, including
the Ofce o Science, it had to be LDRD that
would gestate a biosciences capability or
Sandia. Te payo was rapid and signicant
a $36M project ($18M to Sandia) to participate
in the human genome initiative with Celera
Genomics, and an ambitious project to utilize
the complete genomic inormation o oceanic
It all came outof LDRD . . .
hey would have
walked away if
hey hadnt seen
he scholarly
publications fromSandia.
Structural model o the protein, rhodopsin, alone (top) and in th
context o a biological membrane (bottom), its unctional envir
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
16/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
carbon-xing cyanobacteria (blue-green algae)
to generate a deeper understanding o the
metabolic processes in this key component o
phytoplankton the base o the aquatic ood
web that removes carbon dioxide
rom the oceans and transorms
it, via photosynthesis, to
carbohydrates and ats (including
oils). Sandias current leadership
in the initiative to utilize such
algae as a potential source o oil-
based transportation uels (while
recycling carbon dioxide, CO2) is
an ospring o that initial project.
More importantly, Grant and
several o his collaborators
perceived this Sandia transition
as a wave that Sandia simply had
to catch and ride, its surboard
the incredible parallel capability in molecular
dynamics simulation. And LDRD was right
there, exactly where it was supposed to be
at the cutting edge making investments
in parallel computing and acilitating this
capability, which is so crucial to u nderstanding
the complexity o both individual proteins
and the molecular networks that regulate
biological processes. Grants prior work in
gradient-driven di usion through membranes,
in addition to other aspects o his work, was
now, immediately applicable to gradient-
driven diusion through the semipermeable
membranes o livi ng cells. And a lthough DOE
Ofce o Science unding rom the Genomes-
to-Lie project would be orthcoming, LDRD
investment preceded that unding, keeping
the initiative elegantly balanced atop that
wave. Both modeling and experimental aspectswere unded, including the rst applications
to the lie sciences o Sandias hyperspectral
microarray capability. (p.40)
For Grant Heelnger came the logical request
rom Sandia upper management to assist in
managing the Sandia biouels initiative, a
task in which he is currently engaged. Tis
represents a transition rom the uid dynamics
o storing Natures ancient sunlight gas and oil
to understanding and enhancing the molecular
dynamics o newly synthesized, Sunshine-
to-Petrol oils made with genetically and
proteomically engineered algae (among other
projects). In overview, the transition seems like
a logical one. But to smooth that transition, to
create a logical ow rom one arena to the other,
LDRD was there with seed unding to allow the
testing and actualization o the ideas required
to assist a sta member in developing and
enhancing necessary pieces o expertise.
And interestingly, Grant is able to step back and
see the entire landscape. Noting that LDRD
unding has assisted in allowing Sandia to hire
more scientists with a depth o experience in
molecular and cellular biology, Grant reects, as
the Laboratories biology eort matures, I expect
that there will come a time when someone will
replace me or the biouels initiative, and Ill
move on. Undoubtedly LDRD will be there to
acilitate those transitions, as well.
Seeding New Algorithmsand New Careers in National-Security Surveillance
The Opportunity o Blind AlleysKatherine Simonson
How does a doctorate in statistics translate
into multiple successul Sandia LDRD-unded
projects with denitive national-security
impact? Such an interesting and seemingly
unusual progression rames the career path o
Katherine Simonson. During an approximatelytwenty-year career at the Laboratories,
Simonsons work has ex hibited a undamental
ingenuity that characterizes successul LDRD
endeavor, and its collaborative scope has
impacted the careers o several other scientists.
It is no secret that persistent surveillance and
reconnaissance is conducted by the US, its al lies,
and its adversaries. And given the multiple
orms o national security threats, improving
the accuracy o such surveillance becomes
critical. But the myriad types o sensors that
survey the environment and relay inormation
to intelligence analysts suer rom a variety
o limitations that are currently best dealt
with by dev ising superior image-processing
algorithms. Such algorithms can compensate
or various sources o noise and other eects
in the collected images, such as jitter, which
generally denotes deviation or deect in a
digital signal, displacing that signal rom its
ideal position in time or space, and thereore,
causing artiacts in the signals arrivi ng rom
sensors.
Such problems are amenable to statistical
analysis, and or a statistician arriving at
Sandia, Simonson experienced an immediate
excitement about the diversity o work
ongoing.
Beginning in Sandias Statistics group, she
moved on to apply her skills to radar targetrecognition with a team developing and
rening algorithms or synthetic aperture
radar (SAR) data. It was at that time, almost
a decade into her participation in Sandia
programmatic work, that she applied or her
rst LDRD unding, but was unortunately
unsuccessul. But the attempt itsel was
indicative o the germination o new ideas.
Simonson perceived that what was lacking was
LDRD washe cradle that
nurtured this
[biological
ciences]
nitiative.
an entirely novel and global approach to
improving sensor-generated data.
Ultimately, Simonson persevered and received
LDRD unding or a proposal involving
improved geolocation rom space-based
sensors. Te statistics-based technique
developed under this program enabled a
new, higher-precision, edge-based method,
predicated on the premise that a lgorithms
must be able to provide a measure o the
statistical uncertainty associated with their
solutions, and thereore, be able to recognize
poor solutions. Tis prevents errors rom
propagating, meaning that the probability
that images would reveal artiacts, such as
due, or example, to the same monitored scene
experiencing weather changes (as rom a sunny
to a cloudy day), was greatly reduced.
Another unded LDRD project stemmed
rom the observation that so-called staring
radiometric sensors those constantly
monitoring environments to detect changesin electromagnetic radiation (visible and other
light) required advances to compensate
or artiacts in detection o changes in
scenes, arising rom sensor platorm jitter.
Analysts needed to know some estimate o
the condence or lack thereo that the
eatures o the scene detected as dierences
were actually signicant, or were, instead due
to jitter-induced artiacts. Te challenge was
With proper image registration, results o scene subtraction o the same scene at two time periods about one-minute apa
the appearance o new eatures in the scene, such as a number o people standing along a road on a ridge (indicated by t
8/3/2019 2009 Ldrd Expanding
17/25
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES LDRD Expanding Professiona
to develop algorithms that could tell an analyst
what they knew and what they didnt.
In the intelligence arena, alse
alarms caused by jitter or by
weather changes constitute a
signiicant problem. And perect
rapid-ire precision is extremely
computationally intensive.
Simonsons cu rrent LDRD
project pursues a statistical
approach combining both
temporal and spatial variation
to weight each pixel in an image.
he result is a much better
measure o scene changes, at a
lower computational cost, which
also reports ewer alse-alarms.
And the algorithm knows what
it doesnt know; i its solution in
a particular case is not a good one, it reveals
that act to the intelligence analyst.
Tis algorithm appears to be generalizable
to dierent sensor systems, and a patent
application or the methodology has been
submitted. A co-author on that patent and on
a paper in preparation is ian Ma, who was
born in China and moved to the U.S. at age
11, Ater obtaining his MS at the University
o Illinois, Ma has really blossomed at
Sandia, according to Simonson. And a prior
publication, included Steven Drescher as an
author, a Sandian and UNM graduate student
who ound his MS thesis topic within his
work with Simonson. She sees this mentoring
o students and new sta as implicitly
encouraged by the LDRD process. What
a great experience or a graduate student,she observes; its un to watch them take
ownership o their work.
As this sensor-algorithms program continues
to grow, earning outside unding to solve
special types o detection and tracking
problems, Simonson reects on an important
point regarding the value o LDRD projects
in her career. Tis is the issue o blind
alleys, which in an LDRD project, can be
opportunities. Tree months into her rst
LDRD, she saw that what she had proposed
was not going to work, that she would need to
abandon the approach. But the right turn that
she took at that point turned out to be a boon,
leading to a more-powerul approach that
could solve more-difcult problems, one with
greater overall programmatic impact.
Simonson is unabashed in her praise o the
LDRD process as responsible or signicant
improvements in operational perormance in
the Sandia sensors program and a signicant
return-on-investment to Sandia rom the
programmatic unding rom outside agencies,
and is equally grateul or its contributionto enriching her career as both researcher,
colleague and mentor.
Applying Expertise toa Breadth o Discovery
Postdoc to Project LeadSeema Singh
A biophysicist utilizing Atomic Force
Microscopy (AFM) studying the structure
and unction o membrane proteins an
important class o biological molecules
regulating the unction o living cells
Seema Singh was introduced to Sandia as a
postdoctoral research associate, a 1996 Ph.D.
recipient rom the University o New Mexico,
at a time when Sandia was seeking to expand
its role in DOEs biosciences initiative. Playing
o this somewhat serendipitous connection,Singh came to Sandia, a biophysicist among
chemical engineers, some o whom were
examining problems with perhaps similar
physics underpinnings, but in inorganic
systems rather than biological ones. In that
sense, Seema became a linchpin in a transition,
and so rom the beginning, her career
investment at Sandia was marked as one both
o great challenge and great potential.
Introduced to Je Brinker (p.38), Seema
perceived several research directions that
Recommended