ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories Fellow Keith Matzen has been awarded the 2019 Distinguished Career Award by Fusion Power Associates, a national nonprofit research and educational foundation, for his many contributions to the laboratory development of nuclear fusion. The foundation annually brings together senior U.S. and international fusion experts to review the status of […]
Category Archives: Science / Technology / Engineering
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Sandia establishes collaborative research facility for low-temperature plasmas
December 20, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is setting up a collaborative facility to help researchers worldwide study low-temperature plasmas, the most pervasive state of matter in the universe. The 5-year, $5.5 million project, called the Sandia Low Temperature Plasma Research Facility, is sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Participants will be selected […]
Internships fuel research for engineering students from Puerto Rico
December 5, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — For Edgardo Desarden Carrero, a student in the newly created electrical engineering doctorate program at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, his two summers working in resilient energy systems research at Sandia National Laboratories was his first internship. He is an unusual student in that he is also a professor of electrical […]
High-speed fire footage reveals key insights for power plant safety
December 4, 2019 – 9:22 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — High energy arcing faults are high-power electrical discharges between two or more conductors that can release tens of thousands of amps of current. They can result in explosions that reach about 35,000 degrees Celsius — about the temperature of lightning strikes — and vaporize steel and spew hot metal particles into the […]
NM company secures funds, land for medical-isotope producing reactor using Sandia concept
November 21, 2019 – 8:34 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A New Mexico company secured funding this year and located 240 acres of land in the southeastern corner of the state to build a small reactor that will exclusively produce medical isotopes. The concept was developed and licensed by Sandia National Laboratories to help establish a stable domestic supply of medical isotopes, […]
AI center to combine hardware, software for practical gains
October 31, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta are launching a research center that combines hardware design and software development to improve artificial intelligence technologies that will ultimately benefit the public. AI is an emerging field with eventual applications ranging from autonomous […]
Advanced microscopy reveals unusual DNA structure
October 30, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An advanced imaging technique reveals new structural details of S-DNA, ladder-like DNA that forms when the molecule experiences extreme tension. This work conducted at Sandia National Laboratories and Vrije University in the Netherlands provides the first experimental evidence that S-DNA contains highly tilted base pairs. The predictable pairing and stacking of the […]
National Hispanic science and engineering organization honors two Sandia researchers
October 22, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Materials scientist Nic Argibay and health and safety senior manager Rafael Gonzalez were honored at the 31st annual Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference by Great Minds in STEM, a nonprofit organization that recognizes Hispanic leadership and achievement in science, technology, engineering and math. Argibay received a Most Promising Scientist or Engineer […]
Armoring satellites to survive and operate through attacks
October 21, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Satellites do a lot of things — they help people navigate from one place to another, they deliver television programming, they search for new stars and exo-planets and they enable the U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy. But until recently, one thing they haven’t done — or needed to do — is defend themselves. […]
Engineering success by predicting failure
October 16, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Since people started forging and working with metal, they’ve arguably been interested in how it breaks. But only since the 1950s have scientists and engineers had a mathematical framework for using laboratory measurements of material failure to predict a structure’s resistance to cracking. “These tools work well for brittle materials, such as […]
Wrangling big data into real-time, actionable intelligence
October 14, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Social media, cameras, sensors and more generate huge amounts of data that can overwhelm analysts sifting through it all for meaningful, actionable information to provide decision-makers such as political leaders and field commanders responding to security threats. Sandia National Laboratories researchers are working to lessen that burden by developing the science to […]
Sandia research focuses on ‘switching on’ iron in clay minerals
October 11, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researchers have discovered the mechanism to “switch on” iron residing in clay mineral structures, leading to the understanding of how to make iron reactive under oxygen-free conditions. This research will help scientists understand and predict how contaminants, such as arsenic, selenium and chromium, move through the environment and enter […]
Security in a heartbeat
October 7, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A thumbprint to unlock a door. An eye scan to unlatch a vault. Both were once ideas of the future that may become things of the past if current research is successful. Sandia National Laboratories is collaborating with a New Mexico small business to test and develop a biometric security system based […]
National security chip plant gets an upgrade
October 3, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories has completed phase one of an anticipated three-year upgrade at its plant responsible for making integrated circuits, similar to computer chips. The facility is now fully compatible with industry-standard, 8-inch silicon wafers — thin, round starting materials used for making chips. Previously, Sandia used 6-inch wafers. Supporting the new […]
Containing a nuclear accident with ground-up minerals
September 30, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are developing a promising new way to prevent the spread of radioactive contamination and contain the hot molten mass that develops within a nuclear reactor during a catastrophic accident. During a three-year Laboratory Directed Research and Development project, a team of scientists discovered and patented a process […]