Sandia Labs FY22 Laboratory Directed Research & Development Annual Report

FY22 ANNUAL REPORT

Professional Society and Conference Awards

AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY NICHOLAS METROPOLIS AWARD.

AMERICAN NUCLEAR SOCIETY BEST PAPER AWARD.

ALINA KONONOV , a postdoc in Sandia’s Quantum Computer Science Department and team member of an FY22 LDRD, focused on improving predictive capability in high energy density simulations, was awarded a Nicholas

EMILY VU , a University of Michigan PhD candidate, collaborated with Sandia PI Aaron Olson on a project to develop the first-ever Monte Carlo radiation transport in stochastic media model capable of accurately characterizing the effects of real-world random

(Photo credit University of Michigan)

Metropolis Award from the American Physical Society. The award recognizes outstanding doctoral thesis work in computational physics. Kononov was acknowledged “for trailblazing contributions to the computational modeling of materials physics, including largescale simulations of irradiated materials and advances in time-dependent density functional theory.” At Sandia, she continues to develop and apply cutting-edge methods to model excited electron dynamics in collaboration with Andrew Baczewski and Stephanie Hansen. Her current projects involve advancing modeling capabilities for warm dense matter and exploring prospects of near-term quantum computing for simulating excited electrons. (Photo credit American Physical Society)

material mixing. The American Nuclear Society acknowledged her paper, an extension of her LDRD work, titled “Amnesia Radius Versions of Conditional Point Sampling for Radiation Transport in 1D Stochastic Media” with a Best Student Paper award, based on the overall quality of presentations from the International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering. Vu reflects on her time at Sandia and the mentorship she received, “I believe my accomplishments now are a palimpsest of the skills I gained as a year round intern at Sandia.”

DOE’S HYDROGEN FUEL CELL TECHNOLOGIES OFFICE POSTDOCTORAL RECOGNITION AWARD. MATTHEW WITMAN , was the co-winner of DOE’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell

and high entropy alloys.” Now a staff member in the Energy Nanomaterials Department, Witman’s award was supported in part by his research contributions on the LDRD project entitled “Developing Novel Liquid Metal Solution Chemistry that Combines Thermochemical and Electrochemical Processes to Produce Renewable Hydrogen by Water Splitting.”

Technologies Office (HFTO) Postdoctoral Recognition Award for “exceptional work in materials-based hydrogen storage, machine learning,

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