Sandia National Labs FY20 LDRD Annual Report

FY20 ANNUAL REPORT

THE INDICATORS

Professional Fellows (American Physical Society) One relevant indicator of advancement and leadership in a ST&E field is the election of individuals as fellows of professional societies. This indicator reflects success for both the researcher and the laboratory as a whole. American Physical Society (APS) Fellows were selected as the exemplar due to the important linkage of physicists with NNSA’s core stockpile stewardship mission. Furthermore, APS Fellowships are awarded based on scientific merit and impact over an extended period of time. (In contrast, some professional societies may also award fellow status based on service to the society.) Because of Sandia’s unique role as a premier engineering and science laboratory, there are relatively fewer APS Fellows when compared to the NNSA physics laboratories. Of the three Fellows elected in the past three years, all of them had LDRD experience. Over the past ten years, over 80% of Sandia’s APS Fellows had LDRD experience.

LDRD and American Physical Society Fellows at Sandia National Laboratories Single Years Five Years

To Date*

FY18 FY19 FY20

FY11-15 FY16-20

FY11-20

Total Awards

1 1

2 2

0

12

10

22 18

Awards with LDRD Roots

N/A

9

9

% with LDRD Roots

100% 100% N/A

75% 90%

81%

Average Years from First LDRD Experience

22.0

12.0

N/A

14.7

13.0

14.8

*Initial year to date: Each NNSA laboratory has chosen the appropriate lookback period to ensure data integrity.

APS Fellow Highlight Senior staff emphasize the importance of LDRD in their early careers at Sandia. They also mention how LDRD seeds the cutting-edge R&D that helps motivate nominations and elections to prestigious societies, such as APS. One example is that of Amalie Frischknecht, who was named an APS Fellow in 2012. Amalie is a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Sandia and a staff scientist at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies. She was nominated to APS for outstanding contributions to the theory of ionomers and nanocomposites, including the development and application of density functional theory to polymers.

9

LABORATORY DIRECTED RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT