Science Highlights 2018
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 31
- Brenda Dingus receives Mexican Physical Society’s 2017 Medal
- Arthur Voter recognized with American Chemical Society Award
- Angel Garcia and Laura Smilowitz honored as Fellows of the AAAS
- David Fry selected as a Fellow of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing
- Christine Anderson-Cook chosen for the American Society of Quality’s Shewhart Medal
- E. Flynn, H. Mukundan, N. Sinitsyn, B. Albright, and T. Light win Laboratory Fellows Prizes
- Discovery of a new soil fungus provides insight into the symbiotic relationship with plants
- Obsolete instrument removal makes way for dynamic plutonium experiments
- X-ray diagnostics of thermal explosions highlighted in Nature and Applied Physics Letters
- SimCCS: An open-source tool for optimizing energy infrastructure developed
- Lab presents Cyber Fire Forensic Incident and Response Training
- Consortium aims to strengthen and diversify the country’s science workforce
- Novel concept for satellite identification and tracking developed
- Stress in 3-D nanoarchitectures distributes throughout core and shell
- Plutonium surface mechanical properties measured
- Advanced Photon Source studies reveal phase and microstructure evolution of U-6Nb
- Additive manufacturing produces the first scale model of a nuclear reactor core component
- Impact of Antarctic basin-scale precipitation on surface ice mass variability modeled
June 27
- Mike Prime earns Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM) award
- Hanna Makaruk recognized as a New Mexico STEM Woman of the Year
- Rian Bahran wins Asian American Most Promising Engineer of the Year Award
- Yongchao Yang awarded the Lab’s first Publication Prize in the Engineering Sciences
- Orion Staples receives American Chemical Society’s Undergraduate Research Award
- Avadh Saxena inducted as Affiliate Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
- Rohit Prasankumar elected secretary-treasurer of an American Physical Society division
- Alan Perelson to be honored as the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecturer in 2019
- New shock physics research facility opens
- Cleanroom upgraded for unclassified research
- Confocal microscope provides innovative diagnostic tools
- Contact-free neuroimaging microscope images the structure of materials
- Methods developed to image the Earth’s subsurface with cosmic rays and gravity
- Ultracold Neutron Facility upgrade may aid sensitivity for the neutron electron dipole moment
- Engineered quantum dots developed for double-pane solar windows
- Carbon cycle response to El Niño warming investigated
- Long-range wireless sensor network developed for harsh environments
- First measurement identifies the exciton mass in a new class of 2-D semiconductors
- Model explains sink density in non-equilibrium chemical redistribution in binary alloys
- X-ray laser provides atomic-level observations of material deformation during high-pressure shock loading
- Lighthouse Directional Radiation Detectors developed
- Single, unifying Pu-239 capture cross section measurement made in the keV - MeV regime
- Transparent polycrystalline Gd3TaO7 ceramics developed
July 27
- Jaqueline Kiplinger elected Fellow of the American Chemical Society
- Cesar Da Silva, Stefano Gandolfi, Alex Zylstra win DOE Early Career Awards
- New Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellows Copp, Girolami, Goodwin, Popov, and Trugman arrive
- Carbon use efficiency diagnostics developed in Nannochloropsis salina
- New neptunium (III) compound isolated
- Studies examine climate processes affecting critical watersheds
- Multipoint satellite observations provide insight into the origins of substorms
- Melt-cast explosive material developed as a potential TNT replacement
- Synergistic methods improve materials fatigue life predictions
- Novel exciton interactions observed in compositionally-defined bundles of carbon nanotubes
- Chemical vapor deposition methods improve molybdenum-based nuclear fuel cladding
- Muon radiography verifies spent nuclear fuel in sealed casks
- Uric acid crystal study reveals the effect of water on mechanical properties
- Software predicts complex multi-species multi-phase turbulent reactive flows in engines
Sept. 26
- High-impact innovations honored as R&D 100 Award Finalists
- Rusty Gray selected for new National Academy of Sciences board on Army R&D
- Claudia Mora named Distinguished Alumna for the University of Wisconsin – Madison
- Jaqueline Kiplinger invited to serve on the American Chemical Society Committee of Ethics
- Grossiord, He, Moore, Poudel win Lab’s Distinguished Postdoctoral Performance Awards
- Marc Kippen recognized with Laboratory’s Inaugural Laboratory Global Security Medal
- State-of-the-art photocathodes grown on atomically thin layers of graphene
- Laboratory uses cavity-nesting bird eggs to monitor for environmental pollution
- LANSCE detectors enable previously unattainable measurements with neutron beams
- Radiation Hardened Single-Board Computer developed for space applications
- Handheld LIBS instrument rapidly analyzes rare earth elements in uranium
- Gold melting at the atomic scale reveals first observation of heterogeneous melting
- First demonstration of an all-solid-state cryocooler
- Adaptive feedback automatically tunes electron beams in advanced x-ray free-electron lasers
- National Criticality Experiments Research Center provides training and experiments
- National Ignition Facility experiment explains a behavior of evolving supernovae
- Magnetic particles discovered in rare earth magnets
