Science Highlights 2016
Science Highlights feature awards and noteworthy scientific achievements at Los Alamos National Laboratory
! Click on an issue date to see the Science Highlight headlines and link to the articles.
January 20
- Bruce Carlsten named IEEE Fellow
- David Morris chosen as AAAS Fellow
- Sarya Fensin wins TMS Young Leaders International Scholar Award
- Sandra One Feather honored as AISES Sequoyah Fellow
- Nan Sauer receives Outstanding Alumna Award from Iowa State University
- Geo-material microfluidics platform studies subsurface reservoir conditions
- Mars rover confirms evidence of an ancient lake and discovers silica enrichment in rock
- Los Alamos leads consortium to enhance fuel cell technology
- Experimental platform to study heterogeneous mix in ICF implosions
- Call for Proton Radiography proposals
- American Society for Quality
- Acoustical Society of America
- Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference
- American Physical Society, Division of Plasma Physics
February 17
- David Mascareñas selected to receive Presidential Early Career Award
- Charles Reichhardt named a Distinguished Referee
- Andrew Baker honored with poster and student awards for fuel cell durability research
- Advancing rational protein design and regulation of fatty acids
- Connectivity modification triples the Wolf Cluster network speed
- Redesigned LANSCE target to provide higher energy neutrons for nuclear science
- Enhanced imaging for dynamic physics research at the Proton Radiography facility
- 3-D nanoscale printing to help develop high-performance materials of the future
- Trident’s single-stage gas gun improves surface height measurements of dynamic friction
- Morphological comparison of uranium materials for nuclear forensics
- Advanced particle tracking to model transport in large 3-D discrete fracture networks
- Understanding structural roles in DNA cyclization
March 16
- Alexandrov and Van Buren win Postdoctoral Distinguished Performance Awards
- Hemez, Korber, and Ronning receive Postdoctoral Distinguished Mentor Awards
- Building international genomics collaborations for global health security
- New fossil results of early primates
- Measurements in high magnetic fields aid understanding of 2-D materials
- Los Alamos a member of DOE’s new lightweight manufacturing consortium
- DANCE measures cross sections to probe conditions of element formation in stars
- New tools reveal hidden roots of material’s post-shock strength
- Uncovering who-infected-whom from pathogen genetic data
April 13
- Roger Wiens awarded French knighthood
- Marc Janoschek selected for Hans Fischer Fellowship
- Jaroslaw Majewski named Fellow of the Neutron Scattering Society of America
- Tom Terwilliger elected 2016 President of the American Crystallographic Association
- Asterix neutron spectrometer probes chemical evolution of surfaces
- Proton Radiography Facility commissions electromagnetic magnifier
- Mechanism of one of the most efficient artificial catalytic reactions
- Water signatures and their thermal stability in bedded salt for nuclear waste storage
- Largest ever temperature range achieved while measuring TATB crystal structure
- Los Alamos aids in MicroBooNE’s first neutrino sightings
- Climate sensitivity of the glaciers of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica
May 11
- Jonathan Engle wins DOE Early Career Award
- Ning Xu given journal’s Outstanding Reviewer Award
- Maruti Mudunuru recognized with Robert J. Melosh Award
- Nan Sauer receives Pollution Prevention Lifetime Achievement Award
- Richard Sandberg elected to leadership of LCLS Users’ Executive Committee
- Lab employees honored with NNSA Defense Programs Awards of Excellence 2014
- Dynamic error detection method developed for sequence data
- SPIDER scales up to measure plutonium fission product yields
- Lab’s first scanning probe microscopy capabilities for plutonium
- Trident delivers a short duration, extremely intense neutron source
- Thorium target manufacturing for production of a cancer-fighting isotope
- Los Alamos collaborates at the world’s largest and newest stellarator experiment
- Seminal paper on nuclear masses guides search for superheavy elements
June 8
- Doan Nguyen and co-authors win IEEE Van Duzer Prize
- Glen Wurden named associate editor for Journal of Fusion Energy
- New high resolution neutron capability developed at LANSCE
- Turbulent Mixing Tunnel provides insight into buoyancy effects in mixing
- Testing hiRX instrument for improved plutonium assay at Savannah River National Lab
- First Open Science computing campaign completed on the Trinity-Haswell system
- Examining the role of amyloids in type II diabetes
- Andersson, Maloy, McClellan, Stanek guide national efforts in nuclear energy
- Babs Marrone chosen to participate in DOE Technologist in Residence Program
- Los Alamos and Argonne national laboratories lead fuel cell catalyst development
- Spontaneous popping of particles out of a vacuum
July 6
- Aikin and Cerreta honored as ASM Fellows
- Elizabeth Kelly elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association
- Meyerhofer and Ronning named American Physical Society outstanding referees
- Chikara, Manore, Moore, Myers chosen as Postdoc Research Day presentation winners
- LANL hosts Annual Sequencing Meeting and Sequencing/Bioinformatics Training
- Team saves Lab millions for Trinity computer installation
- High-efficiency nanoelectrocatalysts examined
- Improving the capability to detect underground nuclear explosions
- Water-removal technique boosts performance of nanomaterials for energy applications
- Rapid method developed to calculate properties of multicomponent materials
- Cosmic ray muon computed tomography of spent nuclear fuel in dry storage casks
- Space weather workshop addresses how far are we from predictive capabilities
August 3
- Nine Laboratory innovations selected as R&D 100 Award Finalists
- Entropy Engine
- HOSS (Hybrid Optimization Software Suite)
- MarsFS
- Photonic Band Gap Structures
- PuLMo (Pulmonary Lung Model)
- Turning Windows and Building Facades into Energy- Producing Solar Panels
- Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA)
- New, reversibly photoswitching chromogenic protein developed
- Origin of high solar cell efficiency in hybrid perovskites
- First use of seismic interferometry to study the Moon’s internal structure
- Quantum criticality in a low-carrier system
- Strain-gradient crystal plasticity model accounts for size effects in polycrystalline materials
- Researchers polarize protons to study sea quark dynamics
- Microstructure of a candidate accident-tolerant nuclear fuel
- Machine learning accelerates the discovery of new materials
September 7
- Dave Clark honored with Seaborg Award
- Adrienne LaFleur receives Early Career Award
- Arianna Gleason given Alvin Van Valkenburg Award
- James TenCate named Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America
- Joanna Casson wins DOE Energy Facility Contractor’s Group Award
- David Meyerhofer selected as Chair-Elect to APS Nominating Committee
- Sven Vogel appointed to Advisory Panel of European Spallation Source (ESS)
- Tony Redondo served as a panelist for the 66th annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting
- Ice-wedge degradation in warming permafrost
- Students spread the word about sample gathering for a pathogen detection project
- Light-activated photocurrent degradation and self-healing in perovskite solar cells
- SMARTS reveals residual stresses in additively manufactured parts
- Plutonium studies at first-ever explored pressure, temperature, and density regimes
- Dynamic behavior of additive manufactured lattice materials measured
- Model predicts what happens when an electron collides with molecular hydrogen
October 5
- Stuart Maloy wins awards from American Nuclear Society
- Rangachary Mukundan given Outstanding Achievement Award
- Rod Borup and Yu Seung Kim receive DOE awards of merit for fuel cell efforts
- Gary Grider recognized with Lab’s 2015 Feynman Innovation Prize
- Albert, Cincio, Le, and Lu named Laboratory Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellows
- Effect of functional groups in bioderived fuel candidates
- Direct numerical simulations of the shock-turbulence interaction
- ChemCam finds manganese oxides on Mars, Lab project investigates source
- Avoiding the hole-doped cuprate pseudogap regime via HgBa2CuO4+d measurements
- Hierarchical polymer foams with tunable pore size developed
- HAWC searches for gamma rays from dark matter
- First detailed flyer morphology during operation of exploding foil initiators
- First evidence for quantum degenerate plasmas at the National Ignition Facility (NIF)
November 9
- Laboratory inventions receive R&D 100 Awards
- Iain May honored with Outstanding Achievement Award
- Susan Coulter elected chair of the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA)
- Microbes developed to degrade toxic organophosphates and glow
- Prototype Red Sage experiments improve design and diagnostics
- Novel liquid helium technique aids search for a neutron electrical dipole moment
- Accounting and risk analysis for CO2 sequestration at enhanced oil recovery sites
- Blind identification of full-field vibration modes from video measurements
- Engineering nanoscale metamaterials using a novel self-assembly approach
- First-ever rare-earth free permanent magnets with 20 MGOe energy product
- Ejecta transport studies in gases find high cerium-to-cerium hydride conversion rate
- Patent awarded for process to granulate fine radioactive powder
- First accurate thermodynamic results of the electron component in warm dense matter
December 14
- Daniel Livescu elected as an AIAA Associate Fellow
- Wilton Kort-Kamp chosen for Brazilian CAPES Thesis award
- Ghanshyam Pilania awarded Humboldt Research Foundation Fellowship
- Funsten, Gustavsen, Johnson, Kline, Kress, Simakov, Werner, Zhu named APS Fellows
- Pavel Dub co-authors catalysis book
- Method developed to scale up the size of quantum-dot solar windows
- International Academy for Women of the Americas tours LANSCE
- Quantifying detonation conditions upon high velocity fragment impact
- Unraveling cross-energy coupling in the Earth’s radiation belts with SHIELDS
- A new class of robust fuel cells based on ion-pair-coordinated polymers
- Microstructural effects on damage evolution in shocked polycrystalline materials
- TRIDENT enables application of a laser-driven intense pulsed neutron source
- High density polycrystalline ceramics for high voltage opening switch applications
