Newsletters and Reports

The Office of Defense Programs at NNSA publishes the Stewardship Science Today  newsletter on a quarterly basis. The newsletter highlights current research carried out by groups in the DOE/NNSA laboratories in a wide variety disciplines in the support of science-based stockpile stewardship.

Volume 3, Number 3 features research being conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to improve the safety of explosives. This issue also introduces you to the first two alumni of the DOE/NNSA Laboratory Residency Graduate Fellowship (LRGF) program and the new classes of the Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship and LRGF programs.

Volume 3, Number 4 features an article about the record-breaking shot that occurred at the National Ignition Facility in August and important research being conducted at Texas A&M University’s Center of Research Excellence on Dynamically Deformed Solids. Be sure to note the upcoming events listed on the Calendar, particularly the early January deadlines for submitting applications to the DOE/NNSA Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship and Computational Science Graduate Fellowship programs.

Volume 4, Number 1 highlights the winners of Best Poster Awards from the recent Stewardship Science Academic Programs Symposium, and provides an outline of SNL’s multi-platform study of Ga₂O₃, along with a description of a new digital holography diagnostic for shock compression experiments, and a brief update on studies of helium bubble dynamics in aging plutonium.

Volume 4, Number 2 is the first to be published by the Defense Programs Office of Strategic Partnerships, which now manages the NNSA Stewardship Science Academic Programs. Featured in this issue are an update from the Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program III, an outline of new opportunities for collaborative work on Sandia’s Z Machine, and new results from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory showing that new scintillating nanoguide fiber blocks provide superior performance as compared to legacy fiber blocks for neutron imaging.

Volume 4, Number 3 features a profile of Nenad Velisavljevic, currently the director of the High Pressure Collaborative Access Team (HPCAT) at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory.  Prior to joining HPCAT, Nenad was a Staff Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.  He was also a CDAC graduate student in the group of Yogesh Vohra at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.  Also included in this issue is a profile of Sakun Duwal, currently Staff Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories.  Sakun joined SNL originally as a postdoctoral researcher following her graduate studies with Choong-shik Yoo at Washington State University, where she was a CDAC graduate student.

Volume 4, Number 4 contains a short summary of recent work by CDAC postdoctoral researcher Matthew Diamond on the use of x-ray diffraction for imaging the changing electron density distribution of ferric iron in (Mg,Fe)O as it passes through the high- to low-spin transition at conditions of Earth’s mantle.  This issue also contains a report on progress of subcritical experiments on uranium at the Nevada National Security Site.

Volume 5, Number 1 highlights the acheivement of ignition at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on December 5, 2022, as well as the  simulations carried out by groups from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Laboratory of Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester, which who contributed to the experimental design for the shot. Also featured are the Outstanding Poster Award recipients from the 2023 Stewardship Science Academic Programs Symposium held in February 2023, including CDAC’s Allison Pease from Michigan State University!

Volume 5, Number 2 contains an announcement of the SSAA Centers of Excellence, of which CDAC is one.  Our Center was renewed along with the award of seven other Centers.  A description of the Materials Data Science for Stockpile Stewardship Center of Excellence is provided in this issue, along with an update on magnetic reconnection experiments being performed on the MAIZE pulsed power generator at the University of Michigan.

Volume 5, Number 3 features an announcement for the latest Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program Forum and Pre-Proposal Meeting, a listing of the 2023 recipients of the Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowships and Laboratory Residency Graduate Fellowships, and an update on the 2023 Minority Serving Institutions Internship Program (MSIPP).

Volume 5, Number 4 introduces a new way of approaching sensitivity analysis of turbulent flow and also contains and update from the CREDDS Center on the consequences of the discovery of self-healing on the design of damage-resistant metals.

The Stewardship Science Academic Programs Annual is published yearly by the NNSA Office of Strategic Partnerships and outlines recent developments in the SSAP Centers and grant funded projects, features student and alumni profiles, and reports on new developments in stewardship science research taking place in the NNSA Laboratories.

SSAP Annual 2021  contains profiles of CDAC alumna Sakun Duwal (p. 20), now at Sandia National Laboratories, and CDAC graduate student Samantha Couper (p. 24), along with two research briefs on diamond encapsulated silicon fibers and the multi-technique synchrotron x-ray and infrared spectroscopic study of the complex silicate material jarosite at high pressure (p. 13).

SSAP Annual 2022 features an article (p. 17) describing the the combination of theory and experiment in the UIUC and Utah groups.  At UIUC, Brian Blankenau and Tianyu Su are carrying out experiments at HPCAT in support of their first-principles calculations in the Complex Materials and Phase Transition Dynamics Thrusts. At Utah, Samantha Couper has used finite element modeling using the ALE3D method to illuminate her deformation and texture development experiments on MgO + MgSiO₃ mixtures, a part of the Plasticity, Strength and Deformation Thrust.

SSAP Annual 2023 is a much-expanded edition containing updates on the Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program as well as the Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program.  An overview (p. 11) of the current research activities of CDAC students Chantelle Kiessner (Utah) and Allison Pease (Michigan State) illustrates how research on key problems in Earth and planetary science can address important issues in materials science more broadly.