ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Be grateful you’re not on a dragonfly’s diet. You might be a fruit fly or maybe a mosquito, but it really wouldn’t matter the moment you look back and see four powerful wings pounding through the air after you. You fly for your life, weaving evasively, but the dragonfly somehow tracks you […]
Author Archives: Troy Rummler
Sandia Labs to double assistance to small businesses
June 26, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories will be doubling the amount of technical assistance it provides to small businesses, following legislation signed into New Mexico state law this year. The new law raises the cap on the value of services Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories can offer a company through the New Mexico Small […]
Sandia launches a bus into space
May 23, 2019 – 8:23 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories recently launched a bus into space. Not the kind with wheels that go round and round, but the kind of device that links electronic devices (a USB cable, short for “universal serial bus,” is one common example). The bus was among 16 total experiments aboard two sounding rockets that […]
Future hypersonics could be artificially intelligent
April 18, 2019 – 4:52 pm
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A test launch for a hypersonic weapon — a long-range missile that flies a mile per second and faster — takes weeks of planning. So, while the U.S. and other states are racing to deploy hypersonic technologies, it remains uncertain how useful the systems will be against urgent, mobile or evolving threats. […]
Three Sandia Labs researchers earn national honors in leadership and technology
February 11, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Three Sandia National Laboratories researchers were honored at the BEYA (Black Engineer of the Year) STEM Global Competitiveness Conference for their leadership and technological achievements. Warren Davis, Quincy Johnson and Olivia Underwood received their awards during the conference in Washington, D.C., Feb. 7-9. The annual meeting recognizes black scientists and engineers and […]
Modeling terrorist behavior with Sandia social-cultural assessments
January 24, 2019 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Part of what makes terrorists so frightening is their penchant for unpredictable, indiscriminate violence. One day they could attack a global financial center. And the next they could hit a neighborhood bike path. A team of Sandia social-behavioral scientists and computational modelers recently completed a two-year effort, dubbed “Mustang,” to assess interactions […]
Quantum research gets a boost at Sandia
October 24, 2018 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Department of Energy has awarded Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories $8 million for quantum research — the study of the fundamental physics of all matter — at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies. The award will fund two three-year projects enabling scientists at the two labs to build advanced tools for […]
Sandia delivers first DOE sounding rocket program since 1990s
October 22, 2018 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A new rocket program could help cut research and development time for new weapons systems from as many as 15 years to less than five. Sandia National Laboratories developed the new program, called the High Operational Tempo Sounding Rocket Program, or HOT SHOT, and integrated it for its first launch earlier this […]
Sandia Labs names first Jill Hruby Fellows
October 11, 2018 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories has named Mercedes Taylor and Chen Wang its first Jill Hruby Fellows. The honorees have each been awarded a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in technical leadership, comprising national security-relevant research with an executive mentor. Susan Seestrom, chief research officer and associate laboratories director for advanced science and technology, will mentor […]
Small business recycling ventures propelled by Sandia engineering
September 27, 2018 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Along Route 66 in rural, eastern New Mexico is a defunct ethanol plant in Tucumcari. Still hanging inside the building, calendars from 2010 mark the year it closed, and six massive fermentation tanks — each one 35 feet tall and 55,000 gallons — sit empty. Drought has depleted local corn harvests that […]
Progress toward plugging an antibiotic pump
August 20, 2018 – 7:15 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Each year in the U.S., at least 23,000 people die from infections caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Using computer modeling, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are helping to develop the means to prevent some of those […]
Most wear-resistant metal alloy in the world engineered at Sandia National Laboratories
August 16, 2018 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — If you’re ever unlucky enough to have a car with metal tires, you might consider a set made from a new alloy engineered at Sandia National Laboratories. You could skid — not drive, skid — around the Earth’s equator 500 times before wearing out the tread. Sandia’s materials science team has engineered […]
International corrosion society elects first Sandia fellow
June 4, 2018 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A decade ago, while studying potential corrosion of containers for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, Sandia National Laboratories materials scientist David Enos designed an intricate solution to a sticky problem. Computer simulations showed the likelihood of unusually high heat and humidity deep inside the repository. Temperatures would rise […]
A splash of detergent makes catalytic compounds more powerful
May 30, 2018 – 5:00 am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M — Researcher David Rosenberg examines images of a white powder under a powerful scanning electron microscope. Up close, the powder looks like coarse gravel, a heap of similar but irregular chunks. Then he looks at a second image — the same material produced by colleague Hongyou Fan instead of purchased from a catalog […]