Sandia Lab News

Sandia interns sprint to the challenge

Four intern teams competed for eight weeks this summer in Sandia’s fourth annual Nuclear Weapons Summer Product Realization Institute. During the NW SPRINT, nontraditional teams develop innovative concepts using new technologies, and identify and address gaps in those technologies. It also serves to create a recruiting pipeline.

Strongest of the strong

Tiffany Tafoya, a Sandia missile defense technologist, deadlifts cars and carries around giant heavy stones in her free time. She’s also really good at it. Tiffany trains in strongman, a weightlifting-based sport that involves physical and mental strength, speed and endurance.

Sandia hosts Albuquerque’s first CyberPatriot Advanced CyberCamp

About 20 middle and high school students came to Sandia for Albuquerque’s first CyberPatriot Advanced CyberCamp, a weeklong cybersecurity workshop supporting the Air Force Association’s CyberPatriot program. The workshop taught students advanced security concepts and prepared them for an upcoming competition season this fall.

Detecting quark nuggets, a candidate for extreme ball lightning and dark matter

Thirteen years ago, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Science and Technology Pace VanDevender retired from Sandia to become an 18th-century style “gentleman physicist.” He wanted to understand two mysteries before he died: puzzling electromagnetic signals observed on the Los Alamos-Sandia FORTE satellite and extreme ball lightning.