Toby Townsend looks at evolving landscape of the Labs and the world

When Associate Labs Director Toby Townsend looks at the division he leads — Deterrence, Science and Energy — he doesn’t just see 2,000 people and a site on the edge of Silicon Valley, he sees a division that doesn’t wait to be led. It leads.

“The challenges the United States faces today are maybe the most complex and intertwined I’ve ever seen,” Toby said. “Our primary mission is, and always will be, the safety, security and effectiveness of the nuclear deterrent. But if you look at the work we have been able to build from that one mission — in microelectronics, 3D printing, cybersecurity, combustion — we are able to help the nation address many of these threats.”

This year, Sandia added a new directorate called Integrated Security Missions. The Deterrence, Science and Energy; National Security Programs; and Global Security divisions are all part of this new directorate. That linkage, Toby said, allows his division to collaborate more closely with others across Sandia to tackle these issues.

“For the last couple of decades, we’ve had a huge lift in our nuclear weapons program through the modernization era, which has enabled us to build cutting-edge capabilities,” he said. “Now ISM is going to allow us, through a virtuous cycle, to parlay those capabilities into other national security challenges. It is the next step in our ability to have impact for the nation.”

Deputy Labs Director Deborah Frincke leads the Integrated Security Missions Directorate, which provides solutions to the nation in a rapidly evolving global landscape. The directorate’s mission is rooted in keeping the unthinkable from happening through threat awareness, prevention and reduction; deterrence and defense; and strategic technical resilience. Toby and the other division leaders help connect capabilities across those mission areas to achieve that goal.

“A single division can’t solve the complexity of the challenges brought to the Laboratories,” Toby said. “Being part of ISM allows us to partner in new ways with neighboring divisions. We need the strong partnerships with the other divisions to bring integrated solutions the country is asking for.”

Toby said the Labs’ Livermore campus is uniquely placed to do all of those because of the geographic proximity to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and universities and industry partners in the Bay Area and Northern California.

“That proximity allows us to partner in ways you just cannot do without face-to-face time,” he said. “The fact that I can travel within a single day to have strategic conversations at all the other national labs and still get home the same day is incredibly powerful.”

DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute near Oakland, California, is one example of how five national labs and seven academic research partners can collectively spur scientific discovery.

“I love how we collectively show up in Emeryville at JBEI, the co-owned facility between all DOE entities, so we can work on something as important as bioenergy,” Toby said. “All the laboratories partnering together to solve a problem is really cool to see.”

But it’s not just national labs in this ecosystem.

“The way the three labs have partnered with industry and local Bay Area companies like NVIDIA, Google and the tech sector allows us to be part of the forefront of technological breakthroughs.”

Sandia is both responding to the nation’s needs as they arise and planning for the needs to come. “We are working at the speed of relevance,” he said.