ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researchers Mike Cuneo and Igal Brener have been selected Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Cuneo was selected for “developments in inertial confinement fusion with magnetically-driven-implosions and electrode cleaning.” Over the course of his 25-year Sandia career, he has pursued the goal of pulsed-power-driven thermonuclear fusion.
He has authored or co-authored more than 150 refereed papers, with 18 in the premier physics journal Physical Review Letters. He was manager of Sandia’s Radiation and Fusion Experiments department from 2007 to 2013 and is senior manager of the Pulsed Power Accelerator Science and Technology group.
Said Cuneo, “The award is ultimately a recognition of the research environment, talented people and two decades of achievement of Sandia’s entire pulsed power center, which depends on the collaboration of large teams of scientists, engineers and technicians.”
He received his undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan.
Brener, who joined Sandia in 2004, was selected for “contributions to terahertz science and technology.” Projects on which he has worked include chem-bio sensing, terahertz science and devices, plasmonics, metamaterials and solid state lighting.
In 2008, he became nanophotonics thrust leader at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, which is operated jointly by Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science as a user facility also available to researchers from industry and academia. Brener holds 14 U.S. patents and has authored more than 180 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers.
A native of Uruguay, Brener received undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering and physics as well as his doctorate in physics from the Technion, the Israeli technology institute. Early in his career, he worked at Bell Labs.
He was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2007, and is principal investigator for Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development project “Electrically Tunable Metamaterials for Agile Filtering in the Infrared.” He also is a member of the Department of Energy’s Solid-State Lighting Science Energy Frontier Research Center; and participates in a number of other projects in nanophotonics.
Brener has also mentored doctoral students and postdocs, and is proud that some of his graduates went on to pursue successful careers and become leaders in their fields.
The number of fellows chosen annually by the IEEE is restricted to less than one-tenth of one percent of the total voting membership, or less than 400 of the 400,000 members in 160 countries. Members participate in research ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics.