Sandia to celebrate 40 years of solar power research
In 1978, Sandia began a unique program of research on concentrating solar power at the newly constructed National Solar Thermal Test Facility. Forty years later, the facility is still the only one of its kind in the United States. Sandia will celebrate the solar tower’s 40th anniversary on July 31.
The amazing growth of renewable energy from solar cells: A lesson for how we fund research?
Since 2004, the rate at which solar cell power is installed has doubled every 22 months and is now in excess of 0.1 terawatts per year. Research driving some of this expansion began right here at Sandia more than 40 years ago.
Cooking composites in the sun
Sandia’s solar tower is helping to assess how extreme temperature changes affect materials. The tests for the Air Force take advantage of the ability of Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility to simulate a very rapid increase in temperature followed by an equally rapid decrease.
Smarter, safer bridges with Sandia sensors
Sandia and UK-based Structural Monitoring Systems PLC have been working together for 15 years to create transportation systems that can send a signal when they're damaged. They've outfitted a U.S. bridge with a network of sensors that will alert maintenance engineers when they detect a crack large enough to require repair.
Sandia computational researcher wins DOE Early Career Research Program award
Sandia researcher Eric C. Cyr has received a 2018 Early Career Research Program award of $500,000 every year for five years to improve deep neural networks so they more efficiently combine experimental results with the most complex computer models.
Generating electrical power from waste heat
Directly converting electrical power to heat is easy, but the opposite, converting heat into electrical power, hasn't been so easy — until now. Sandia researchers have developed a tiny silicon-based device that can harness what was previously called waste heat and turn it into DC power.
Sandia light mixer makes 11 colors at once
Sandia scientists have developed a new light-mixing metamaterial that can be used in many applications, from creating a multi-color laser pointer to discovering hidden archeological sites in dense forests to detecting signs of extraterrestrial life in the air to increasing communications speed and capacity via fiber-optic networks.
Robot rivals rally to rope in rewards at rodeo
Last week, Sandia hosted the 12th annual Western National Robot Rodeo, a week-long, 11-event competition where eight civilian and military bomb squads from around the region solved challenging, simulated scenarios.
Tafoya named industrial engineering fellow
For her dedication to optimizing business processes and systems, Joan Tafoya recently was named a fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, which recognized her work solving complex technical problems and instituting lean practices — passions that drew her to Sandia last fall after a 27-year career at Intel.
DOE to deploy Arm-based supercomputer prototype at Sandia
Arm microprocessors have been used in numerous applications from vehicle computers to cell phones, but until recently, have not been practical for use in high-performance computing. Astra — one of the first supercomputers to use Arm processors in a large-scale high-performance computing platform — is expected to be deployed at Sandia later this summer.