R&D 100 Awards

R&D World magazine honors inventors by identifying the 100 most technologically significant products and advancements each year and recognizing the winning innovators and their organizations. Winners are chosen from an international pool of submissions from universities, private corporations, and government labs. 

In 2022, Sandia researchers captured four R&D 100 Awards and supported a fifth. One entry also won the R&D 100’s Special Recognition Market Disrupter Silver Award. Since 1976, Sandia has earned 144 awards, including this year’s winners — often referred to as the "Oscars of invention" or "the Nobel Prizes of technology."

2022 winners

Ultra-Stable Thermally Excellent Advancements in Material Strength

Guangping Xu, right, with his team of Sandia National Laboratories researchers, from left, Hongyou Fan, Haley Davis, Chad McCoy, Jens Schwarz and Melissa Mills, won an R&D 100 award for Ultra-Stable Thermally Excellent Advancements in Material Strength.
Guangping Xu, right, with his team of Sandia National Laboratories researchers, from left, Hongyou Fan, Haley Davis, Chad McCoy, Jens Schwarz and Melissa Mills, won an R&D 100 award for Ultra-Stable Thermally Excellent Advancements in Material Strength.

Taking note of the strength demonstrated by the alternating layers of materials that form seashells, Sandia researchers led by Guangping Xu alternated microscopically thin layers of common table sugar with silica, married them through heat, and came up with a coating stronger, lighter and more cost-effective than those currently protecting U.S. satellites in space. Because the new material is also relatively unaffected by high heat, it is being considered as a protective layer in fusion labs for instruments exposed to temperatures of hundreds of degrees. Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development office supported this research.

Watch the video

Iron Nitride Soft Magnetics

Sandia National Laboratories researcher Todd Monson, along with co-developers at the University of California, Irvine, won an R&D 100 award for Iron Nitride Soft Magnetics
Sandia National Laboratories researcher Todd Monson, along with co-developers at the University of California, Irvine, won an R&D 100 award for Iron Nitride Soft Magnetics

Because of iron nitride’s high magnetization and resistivity, the soft magnetic alloy — capable of operating at high temperatures — is expected to increase the efficiency of smart grid electronics, transformers and electric machines while reducing their size and weight by an order of magnitude. Modern devices and electric-based solutions for vehicles, aircraft and ships require ultra-high-voltage power semiconductor devices to reduce energy loss with high-frequency ratings to reduce system size, weight and volume. They therefore rely on high performance soft magnetic materials. A reduction of even one percent of existing transmission and distribution losses in grid-scale power conversion systems through use of iron nitride would produce $500 million to $1 billion per year in savings.

The highly desirable material is now available for licensing, says Sandia team lead Todd Monson, who worked with co-developers at the University of California Irvine. The work, mainly supported by the DOE’s Office of Electricity, received seed funding from Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development office.

Watch the Video

Automated Threat Estimator for Networks and Applications

Sandia National Laboratories researcher Vince Urias and his team won an R&D 100 Award for the Automated Threat Estimator for Networks and Applications.
Sandia National Laboratories researcher Vince Urias and his team won an R&D 100 Award for the Automated Threat Estimator for Networks and Applications.

With net contents always in flux, cyber analysts must not only quell repetitive cyberattacks but must keep up with threats from electronic entities that might not have existed an hour earlier. Sandia researcher Vince Urias says cyber watchdogs can use Sandia’s Automated Threat Estimator for Networks and Applications to model all possible adversarial paths through network architecture and device configurations. ATHENA fuses data collected from multiple sources to enable users to model and build virtualizations of their networks. Current threat information is then overlaid on the network “digital twin” to prioritize mitigations against cyber threats to their assets.

ATHENA, after validating possible attack routes, provides a decision interface to select the most likely adversarial routes to disable. This situational-awareness tool provides a dynamic network view that can aid in path prediction and threat prioritization. Because the program is not a snapshot but updates continually, decision making is always based on fresh information. Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development office supported this research.

Watch the Video

Proactive Intrusion Detection and Mitigation System

Sandia National Laboratories researcher Shamina Hossain-McKenzie and her team won an R&D 100 Award for the Proactive Intrusion Detection and Mitigation System.
Sandia researcher Shamina Hossain-McKenzie and her team won an R&D 100 Award for the Proactive Intrusion Detection and Mitigation System.

Energy generation through distributed solar resources is making an increasingly positive impact on the environment and the interconnected electric grid. But monitoring the security and protecting the operation of these grid-edge units raises its own problems. To Sandia researcher Shamina Hossain-McKenzie, her team’s newly developed Proactive Intrusion Detection and Mitigation System is the best solution. Developed to secure photovoltaic “smart” inverters and other equipment in distributed energy resources systems, PIDMS, deployed either as software or bump-in-the-wire hardware, provides real-time cyber-physical data analysis to detect malicious and abnormal events and deploy suitable mitigations to eliminate or reduce system impact.

PIDMS can monitor for small photovoltaic system behavior and, with its distributed implementation and peer-to-peer communication, provide a scalable problem-detection solution for large photovoltaic systems.

PIDMS also can be extended to upstream levels such as aggregator and utility systems for multi-level situational awareness coupled with automated detection and mitigation capabilities.

The invention was also awarded R&D 100’s Special Recognition Market Disrupter Silver Award.

Watch the Video

MOSAICS 

Sandia National Laboratories manager William Waugaman oversaw the development and demonstration for MOSAICS
Sandia National Laboratories manager William Waugaman oversaw the development and demonstration for MOSAICS

More situational awareness for industrial control systems, known as MOSAICS, is a comprehensive, integrated and automated cyberdefense capability for industrial control systems, co-developed by researchers at Sandia, Idaho and Pacific Northwest national laboratories and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. It allows system operators to more quickly, easily and effectively detect and characterize cyberattacks against critical infrastructure systems in real time and will eventually provide support for automated response actions. The objective for MOSAICS was the initial operational cyberdefense capacity to defend mission critical infrastructure, said William Waugaman, Sandia acting manager and laboratory technical manager overseeing development and demonstration for the entire project. A MOSAICS prototype was validated through a military utility assessment in August 2021 on a live electrical distribution system.

Previous winners

2021
REMOTE CONTROL — Secure-Firmware Over-the-Air can allow car manufacturers to remotely manage firmware updates and provides enhanced security. (Graphic courtesy of Sandia)

Secure-Firmware Over-the-Air (S-FOTA) Update

QUANTUM ANSWERS — QSCOUT provides scientists free and complete access to the only open quantum computing testbed in the world based on trapped ions.

Quantum Scientific Computing Open User Testbed

FAST FILTER — Sandia developed a reusable and rapidly producible N95 respirator for medical applications in the RAPTR N95 project

Rapidly Producible/Reusable N95 Respirator (RAPTR)

WEC-Sim Image

WEC-Sim

CREATIVE ENSEMBLE — Members of the Sandia research team working on Slycat.

Slycat: Scalable Ensemble Analysis and Visualization

POWERFUL NANOBODIES — Researchers have assembled extremely potent next-generation anti-COVID-19 neutralizing antibodies.

Antibody Therapeutic for SARS-CoV-2

WINDLESS — Sandia co-developed a stationary wind harvester with no external moving parts.

AeroMINE — Stationary Harvesting of Distributed Wind Energy

View the 2021 Winners

2020
Binary 2020

Binary Solvent Diffusion for Fabrication of Large Nanoparticle Supercrystals

Tracktable 2020

Tracktable

HECATE – Software Supply Chain and Assurance Platform

(IDAES) Process Systems Engineering Computational Framework

XRPBS: X-ray Polarizing Beam Splitter

Legion R&D100

Legion: A Data-Centric Programming System

View the 2020 Winners

2019
ADDSec — Artificial Diversity and Defense Security principal investigator Adrian Chavez

ADDSec: Artificial Diversity and Defense Security

CHIRP — Cloud Hypervisor-forensics and Incident Response Platform principal investigator Vincent Urias

CHIRP: Cloud Hypervisor-forensics and Incident Response Platform

MIRaGE — Multiscale Inverse Rapid Group-theory for Engineered-metamaterials team member Charles Reinke, left, and principal investigator Ihab El Kady

MIRaGE: Multiscale Inverse Rapid Group-theory for Engineered-metamaterials

NEDs — High-Performance Nanoantenna-Enabled Detectors team from left, Michael Goldflam, principal investigator David Peters and Anna Tauke-Pedretti (Photo courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories)

NEDs: High-Performance Nanoantenna-Enabled Detectors

View the 2019 Winners

2018
scientist inspects substance in vials

Detergent-assisted Fabrication of Multifunctional Nanomaterials

scientist works with 3D xray contrast imaging system

Large Field-of-View Bench Top 3-D X-Ray Phase Contrast Imaging System

artist rendering of swick zoom

SWiCK Zoom

LAMPS supercomputer

LAMMPS: Atomistic Simulation of Materials

computer scientists collaborate in meeting

Power API

View the 2018 Winners

2017
High-fidelity adaptive deception & emulation system

High-fidelity Adaptive Deception & Emulation System (HADES) Platform

Solid sense gas analyzer on a chip

SolidSense “Gas Analyzer on a Chip”

control system for active damping of inter-area oscillations

Control System for Active Damping of Inter-area Oscillations

Microgrid design toolkit

Microgrid Design Toolkit

Ultra-wide band gap power electronic device

Ultra-Wide Bandgap Power Electronic Devices

View the 2017 Winners

2016
falling particle receiver for concentrated solar energy

Falling Particle Receiver for Concentrated Solar Energy

ultra fast x-ray imager

Ultra-fast X-ray Imager (UXI)

transceiver for quantum keys and encription

Transceiver for Quantum Keys and Encryption (T-QUAKE)

pyomo v4.1 software code

Pyomo v4.1

stress-induced fabrication of functionally designed nanomaterials

Stress-Induced Fabrication of Functionally Designed Nanomaterials

precision high power battery tester

Precision High Power Battery Tester

View the 2016 Winners

2015
CO2 Memzyme 2015

CO2 Memzyme

LED Pulser 2015

LED Pulser

Integrated Circuit Identification 2015

Integrated Circuit Identification

Lightweight Distributed Metric Service 2015

Lightweight Distributed Metric Service

Silicon Carbide JFET Switch 2015

Silicon Carbide JFET Switch

View the 2015 Winners

2014
Membrane Projection Lithography publication snapshot 2014

Portable Diagnostic Device for Bacillus Anthracis Detection in Ultra-Low Resource Environments

Mantevo Suite 1.0 publication snapshot 2014

GOMA 6.0

Solar Glare Hazard Analysis Tool (SGHAT) publication snapshot 2014

Triple Harvesting Plastic Scintillators

View the 2014 Winners

2013
2013 Membrane Projection Lithography publication snapshot

Membrane Projection Lithography

2013 Mantevo Suite 1.0 publication snapshot

Mantevo Suite 1.0

2013 Solar Glare Hazard Analysis Tool (SGHAT) publication snapshot

Solar Glare Hazard Analysis Tool (SGHAT)

View the 2013 Winners

2012
Microsystems Enabled Photovoltaics publication snapshot 2012

Microsystems Enabled Photovoltaics

Neutristor publication snapshot 2012

Neutristor

Sandia Digital Microfluidic Hub publication snapshot 2012

Sandia Digital Microfluidic Hub

Sandia Cooler publication snapshot 2012

Sandia Cooler

View the 2012 Winners

2011
Canary publication snapshot 2011

Biomimetic membranes for water purification

Micro Power Source publication snapshot 2011

Microresonator filters and frequency references

Multifunctional Optical Coatings publication snapshot 2011

Ultra-high-voltage Silicon Carbide Thyristor

View the 2011 Winners

2010
Canary publication snapshot 2010

CANARY: Event Detection Software

Multifunctional Optical Coatings publication snapshot 2010

Multifunctional Optical Coatings

Acoustic Wave Biosensors publication snapshot 2010

Acoustic Wave Biosensors, Rapid Point-of-Care Medical Diagnostics

Micro Power Source publication snapshot 2010

Micro Power Source

Solution Deposition Planarization 2010

Solution Deposition Planarization (SDP), Superconductor Substrate Preparation Process

View the 2010 Winners

2009
Ultralow-Power Silicon Microphotonic Communications Platform 2009

Ultralow-Power Silicon Microphotonic Communications Platform

Hyperspectral Confocal Fluorescence Microscope System 2009

Hyperspectral Confocal Fluorescence Microscope System

Hyperspectral Confocal Fluorescence Microscope System 2009

NanoCoral TM

Artificial Retina Project 2009

Artificial Retina Project

SiCPower Module 2009

SiCPower Module

Catamount N-Way 2009

Catamount N-Way (CNW) Lightweight Kernel

View the 2009 Winners

2008
Xyce Parallel Electronic Simulator 2008

XyceTM Parallel Electronic Simulator 4.0.2

Silicon Micromachined Dimensional Calibration Artifact for Mesoscale Measurement Machines 2008

Silicon Micromachined Dimensional Calibration Artifact for Mesoscale Measurement Machines

Superhyrophobic Coating 2008

Superhydrophobic Coating

View the 2008 Winners

2007
ArcSafe 2007

ArcSafe© with Pulsed Arrested Spark Discharge

Mode-Filtered Fiber Amplifier 2007

Mode-Filtered Fiber Amplifier

ElectroNeedle 2007

ElectroNeedle™ Biomedical Sensor Array

Self-Assembling Process for Fabricating Tailored Thin Films 2007

Self-Assembling Process for Fabricating Tailored Thin Films

Novint Falcon 2007

Novint Falcon and Novint/Sandia 3D-Touch Software (joint)

View the 2007 Winners

2006
Compute Process Allocator 2006

Compute Process Allocator

HTSS10V 2006

HTSS10V

View the 2006 Winners