Sandia Lab News

R&D 100

The venerable R&D 100 contest, slightly more than 50 years old, has a new owner, and the competition continues. Competing in an international pool of universities, corporations and government labs, Sandia inventions captured four R&D 100 Awards this year, as well as two environmental and one business award.

Security in a heartbeat

Sandia is collaborating with a New Mexico small business to test and develop a biometric security system based on the human heartbeat. Sandia signed an agreement with Albuquerque-based Aquila Inc. to develop and test a wearable prototype that can stream in real time an identifying signature based on the electrical activity of a person’s heart.

Hispanics and STEM education at Sandia

The population of Hispanics/Latinos in the U.S. is expected to grow by approximately 40% by 2045, although only approximately 14.4% have bachelor’s degrees or higher and 7% are employed in STEM industries. Presently at Sandia, Hispanics and other minorities make up a significant 34% of the overall workforce. That number is expected to increase, thus promoting diversity at our sites.

Wrangling big data into real-time, actionable intelligence

Social media, cameras, sensors and more generate huge amounts of data that can overwhelm analysts sifting through it all for meaningful, actionable information to provide to decision-makers. Sandia researchers are working to lessen that burden by developing the science to gather insights from data in nearly real time.