Meet Sandia’s newest Fellow

When electrical engineer Susan Esfahani started her career at Sandia more than three decades ago, she never imagined she would one day hold one of the Labs’ most prestigious positions. In January, Susan, a senior engineer in nuclear deterrence, was named a Sandia Fellow.

“It’s a tremendous honor,” Susan said. “I never thought I could make it into a position like this. Over the years, I have worked with many amazing engineers who I owe my thanks for making our projects a success and enabling me to receive such a promotion.”

The Sandia Fellow position, originally called the Senior Fellow when it was created in 1986, is a rare honor. Susan is the 22nd Sandian to become a Fellow and joins the ranks of 11 other current Sandia Fellows.

“I have never been afraid of technically challenging programs. It has always been a personal challenge for me to see if I could learn enough quickly and rise to the moment,” Susan said. “When the task feels overwhelming, I always start burrowing down to improve my technical depth and understanding of the problem, searching for the simple and elegant solution. I try to always choose action and focus my attention on solving my top issues holding back progress.”

Susan’s early days at Sandia

In her 36 years at Sandia, Susan has designed, built, tested and delivered many electrical products for nuclear deterrence systems and other projects.

“While I only formally transferred once, center reorganizations allowed me to try many different jobs,” she said.

Her first job at Sandia was programming war-reserve production testers. Once she was comfortable programming, she joined the Sandia Airborne Computer group, or SANDAC, to expand her expertise. SANDAC was a ruggedized modular multi-processor flight computer used for navigation, guidance and control. Her first module had a few subtle flaws that she struggled to find. Susan quickly learned an important lesson.

“If you want to earn the respect of your peers and compete, deliver products that perform flawlessly,” she said.

The importance of the mission

Susan’s family has a long history of military service. Her father, two uncles, both sons and two nephews were Army Infantry, and one nephew was in the Air Force. When her oldest deployed to Syria, it reminded her of the importance of Sandia’s mission to the security of U.S. troops.

“The nation needs us. The threats are real, and our products are vitally important to deter our adversaries,” she said.

A history of excellence

Susan is particularly proud of her work on P19, a high-consequence safety and security program on which she was the lead systems engineer. The team delivered diamond-stamped hardware in 13 months for overseas installation.

“The entire Sandia team came together to deliver systems, components, testers, production and installation,” she said. “It was the best of times and the worst of times. Every day, we encountered new obstacles to overcome. The dedication of the entire team and working long hours to solve problems enabled us to keep moving forward one painful step at a time. I wasn’t sure we could ever make the delivery until we did.”

The high point for Susan was witnessing the final overseas installations for the operational systems.

Other technical areas Susan supported include nine years designing hypersonic electronics, five years developing advanced firing sets and conventional hard target fuzing, seven years designing radiation-hardened application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, and a year rescoping the electrical architecture for the Mobile Guardian Transport.

“ASICs were the most technically challenging, hard target fuzing was the most fun and hypersonics taught me how to be a system engineer,” she said. “I have had the great fortune to work and learn from many great engineers throughout my career at Sandia.”

On assignment with the Navy

After about 32 years at Sandia, Susan sought a new perspective as the customer and worked for the Navy as part of an inter-personnel agreement assignment. Her role was in the Technical Division of Strategic Systems Programs in Washington, D.C.

That 18-month assignment came during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was encouraged to work remotely but obtained permission to report on-site to integrate and meet as many people as possible.

“Every morning as I drove onto the base, I thought to myself what an honor and privilege it was to work with the Navy directly,” she said. “I learned to really appreciate how lean and hard the Navy works and how much they do for us.”

Sharing her passion

Now, a few months into her new role as a Sandia Fellow, Susan is working on her plans and goals. But she is sure of one thing.

“I have a passion for delivering products,” she said. “It’s not an accident when a system works. It’s an extraordinary amount of hard work and attention to detail.”

Susan plans to share her energy, passion and knowledge with Sandia’s up-and-coming engineers.

“I love excellence in engineering,” she said. “I’m hoping I can guide and support our young engineers in what engineering excellence looks like.”