Sandia Labs FY22 Laboratory Directed Research & Development Annual Report

FY22 ANNUAL REPORT

FY22 Hruby and Truman Postdoctoral Fellowships JILL HRUBY POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP.

The LDRD-funded Jill Hruby Postdoctoral Fellowship was established in 2017 to encourage outstanding women with PhDs in technical fields to consider leadership in national security. Jill Hruby, the Under Secretary of Energy of the United States, was the first woman to lead a national security laboratory and served as Sandia’s director from 2015 to 2017.

SOMMER JOHANSEN – FY22 HRUBY FELLOW.

ALEX DOWNS – FY22 HRUBY FELLOW. ALEX DOWNS completed her doctorate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in August 2021. Downs hopes to create wearable biosensors that would gather real-time molecular measurements from evaluations. The recognition element for this type of biosensor are aptamers—strands of DNA that bind specifically to a given target, such as a small molecule or protein. When a reporter is added to an aptamer sequence and put down on a conductive surface, target binding to the sensor can be measured as a change in electrochemical signal. The work fits well with Sandia’s biological and chemical sensors team. (Photo courtesy of Alex Downs) health markers and lessen the need for patients to visit doctors’ offices and labs for

SOMMER JOHANSEN received her doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of California, Davis, where her thesis involved going backward in time to explore the evolution of prebiotic molecules in the form of cyclic nitrogen compounds; her time machine consisted of combining

(Photo by Sommer Johansen)

laboratory spectroscopy and computational chemistry to learn how these molecules formed during the earliest stages of our solar system. Johansen hopes to help improve comprehensive models of the after-effects of burning bio-derived fuels on Earth’s planetary ecology. Johansen is working with the gas-phase chemical physics department, studying gas-phase nitrogen chemistry at Sandia’s Livermore site.

100