Sandia LabNews

Weapon program meets safety, design requirements

Sandia has successfully completed another milestone in the B61-12 gravity bomb refurbishment program, demonstrating that the Labs is meeting important nuclear safety and use-control requirements. Sandia is the design and engineering lab for non-nuclear components of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, including the B61-12, and is the technical integrator for the complete weapon, assuring that the system meets requirements as a unit.

Testing solutions for mask shortage

Sandia is teaming with medical device manufacturers and local hospitals to increase the availability of respirator masks for health care workers, including conducting tests for manufacturers to show how new mask designs measure up to these industry standards and studying disinfection methods that could enable hospitals to reuse masks, lessening the need for new ones.

Expanding access to cyber research tools

Faculty and students at Purdue University now have access to cybersecurity research software developed at Sandia. The software, called minimega, will help advance cybersecurity research to discover security threats in a variety of systems and develop new safeguards. This is the first time Sandia has collaborated with an academic community to make its cyber software widely available.

Data center earns LEED v4 Gold certification

Sandia’s 725E data center addition for high-performance computing at the Labs’ Albuquerque campus has earned the LEED v4 Gold BD+C: Data Center Certification. The 725E data center was completed in October 2018, and LEED certification took 14 months to achieve. This is the first certification earned under Sandia’s LEED v4 Campus effort.

How much can one person do? Something.

Associate Labs Director for Mission Assurance Mark Sellers writes about what it means to be an ally for diversity and inclusion at Sandia and taking responsibility for fostering a Labs’ culture where people are comfortable sharing their experiences and bringing their whole selves to work.

Working well to stay well

With a record number of Sandia’s workforce now working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Labs’ ergonomic team has helped make the transition to a home office safe for employees. Sandia's ergonomics professionals are fully engaged on a daily basis with educating, training and assisting the workforce using the principles of ergonomic science.

Frank Hansen earns lifetime achievement award

The Wendell D. Weart Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to retired Sandian Frank Hansen at a ceremony in Phoenix on March 10. The award was created by Sandia and Waste Management Symposia Inc. in 2001, in honor of Wendall Weart, who retired from Sandia in 2000, to recognize the recipient’s long-term commitment to solving major nuclear waste challenges.