Big Ideas Lab - Meet the Lab

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

What if one square mile could change the world?Welcome to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where groundbreaking scientific discoveries are transforming the way we understand, interact with and shape our reality.Tucked just beyond the San Francisco Bay, this hub of innovation is home to some of the brightest minds tackling humanity's toughest challenges. In this episode, we pull back the curtain for a rare insider’s tour. You’ll hear stories of breakthrough innovations, the science that powers them, and the people brave enough to push the limits of what's known. Step inside a world where the future is being written—one discovery at a time.---Big Ideas Lab is a Mission.org original series. Executive Produced and Written by Lacey Peace.Sound Design, Music Edit and Mix by Daniel Brunelle.Story Editing by Daniel Brunelle.Audio Engineering and Editing by Matthew Powell.Narrated by Matthew Powell.Video Production by Levi Hanusch.Guests featured in this episode (in order of appearance):Kim Budil, LLNL DirectorPat Falcone,  LLNL Deputy Director of Science and TechnologyBrian Cracchiola, LLNL Explosive Operations Manager for the Strategic Deterrence DirectorateRazi Haque, LLNL Implantable Microsystems Group LeadCarolyn Zerkle, LLNL  Principal Deputy DirectorTom Ramos, LLNL Physicist & Author of From Berkeley to Berlin Brought to you in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

On a lush, vibrant campus at a one-square-mile site tucked away in the hills beyond the San Francisco Bay lies a world of groundbreaking innovation. A history-making project is underway right now by a Bay Area science lab. Nuclear scientists call it the holy grail of clean energy they've been chasing for decades. A DART spacecraft traveling 14,000 miles an hour slammed into the dimorphous asteroid. We're home again to one of the most powerful machines on the globe. It will not only be used for national security, but to improve our health. The energy in the room was just incredible. Laboratory's massive laser, able to recreate the temperatures and pressures close to what exists in the core of stars. Our job is to go where others might fear to go.

Welcome to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, home of cutting-edge scientific discoveries that are revolutionizing how we understand, interact with, and shape our world. For more than 70 years, many of these stories have remained untold. Until now. This is the Big Ideas Lab. Your weekly exploration inside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Hear untold stories, meet boundary-pushing pioneers, and get unparalleled access inside the gates. From national security challenges to computing revolutions, discover the innovations that are shaping tomorrow, today.

Located an hour east from San Francisco and employing more than 8,700 people, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory operates like a small city. More than 500 buildings sit within the one-square-mile footprint, along with a 7,000-acre test site in the nearby hills. It is increasingly vibrant when you wander around the lab. That's Kim Budell, the lab's director. Kim has been working at the lab for more than 35 years. Today, she still finds herself in awe of the sheer scope

of what happens on the Lawrence Livermore campus. It's an exciting R&D environment. There's cool things going on everywhere across the site in computing, in laser science, in about some problem that they're working on. And it could be any or all of the above on any given day. If you were to join Kim on her walk across campus, you would find a vibrant mix of projects, teams, and talent. At one end of the lab, researchers are using high-energy density science to recreate conditions found in the sun. Down the street, you'd find coding teams huddling with environmental scientists modeling the effects of climate change. Meanwhile, across the site, materials engineers are teaming up with biologists to develop implantable devices for

the human brain, while machinists are creating precise components essential for the lab's hundreds of programs. And across this entire square mile site, in every building and in every office, there are countless administrators, creatives, tradespeople, interns, and so many others that are ensuring the cogs of this institution turn smoothly, setting the stage for all these discoveries. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea is a valuable piece of the puzzle. So I always describe us, we're a national security lab with a nuclear core. Our core mission is ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the nation's nuclear deterrent, our nuclear weapons. And so that's not the only thing we do, but it does sort of set the topography for the lab.

But nuclear deterrence isn't the only work the lab is focused on. Over its 70-year history, its scope of responsibility has broadened to include threats from nuclear proliferation and terrorism to energy security and climate resilience. If it threatens national security and global stability, the lab's teams are working on it. So it is a big, sprawling R&D enterprise, but there is a lot of focused mission work that we're responsible for. It tells us what kinds of things we need to be good at, what kinds of facilities and capabilities we have to have, and the types of disciplines we really need to be good at, what kind of physics or chemistry or material science. How do we ensure we can support our core mission and advance U.S. capabilities for national security? What are the big problems facing the nation and the world today that we have something unique to contribute? What's the kind of impact we could imagine having in biosecurity or in climate resilience or in other elements of national security. And so we start to think about how

to bring together multidisciplinary teams around these big galvanizing challenges. We've created optical technologies that are flying on small satellites. We have created technologies that are out exploring the far reaches of the universe on space missions. We were part of the Clementine moon mapping mission. We also built the detectors that went on a mission that went to Mercury. So using our expertise in diagnostics and lasers and optics and other technologies has really allowed us to have a broad footprint in science and technology. From facing challenges at our borders to challenges outside our atmosphere, on any given day at Lawrence Livermore,

researchers are working on astrophysics and planetary physics, material science, resilience to cyber attacks, but resilience to climate uncertainties, fusion physics, lasers and optics, additive manufacturing, 3D printing, transition of energy systems,

carbon neutrality. High-performance computing. Simulation, data science. Human-grade implantable microsystem devices. Fusion ignition. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory faces challenges like these by bringing together teams of experts across disciplines. But solving multifaceted issues that affect everyday people

requires more than scientific ingenuity. It takes sustained commitment, collaboration, and the understanding that progress often happens incrementally. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory invites you to join our diverse team of professionals where opportunities abound for engineers, scientists, IT experts, welders, administrative and business professionals, and more. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, your contributions are not just jobs, they're a chance to make an impact from strengthening U.S. security to leading the charge in revolutionary energy solutions and expanding the boundaries of

scientific knowledge. Our culture at the lab values collaboration, innovation, and a relentless pursuit of excellence. We're committed to nurturing your professional journey within a supportive workspace and offering a comprehensive benefits package designed to ensure your well-being and secure your future. Seize the opportunity to help solve something monumental. Dive into Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's wide variety of job openings at llnl.gov forward slash careers, where you can also learn more about our application process. This is your chance to join a team dedicated to a mission that matters.

Make your mark. Visit LLNL.gov forward slash careers today to discover the roles waiting for you. Remember, your expertise might just be the spotlight of our next podcast interview. Don't delay. Uncover the myriad of opportunities available at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Since its founding in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has become a hub for innovation. This is due in large part to its unique position between academia, government, and industry. Almost everything that we do is looking 10 to 50 years into the future. It's trying to make a better world, a safer world, a more secure world. That's Carolyn Zirkle, the lab's principal deputy director. She oversees key institutional priorities, including safe and successful operations and vital infrastructure.

The goal of a national lab is just to make sure that we are looking at scientific discoveries in particular. If a technology is developed here, we're really not in a replication type mode. We want others to take that technology and use it for good and in the future. But this really is a discovery location. If academia and private industry were at opposite ends of a spectrum, Lawrence Livermore falls directly in the middle. National labs fill a really unique space in the R&D ecosystem in the U.S. Academia operates over very long time scales, but at very fundamental science levels. So each academic researcher typically works with a set of students and postdocs and maybe a few collaborators,

generating knowledge, generating very fundamental knowledge. Industry is very applied, and their timescales are very short. And the national labs fill the space in between. So we do very fundamental research and work very well with academia on advancing the state of knowledge in the world and building those research foundations, which then can connect to industry either through technology transition, licensing, or spinning out companies even to develop technologies. And so that very pragmatic intermediate space is a great power of the U.S. system. We can also work at scale.

We can also work at a level of complexity that is hard for other institutions to do. The lab has the resources and teams to bring these ideas to life, filling an essential gap in the scientific community. While collaboration often means partnering with government agencies or academic institutions, it also means connecting with those just outside their office doors. We have 8,000 employees. We have physicists, chemists, engineers, material scientists, biologists, you name it. And so we can bring together dynamic teams of people from different disciplines to tackle these very large, complex problems

that involve science and technology in very unique ways. I would tell you that the majority of the breakthroughs at the laboratory are not one individual doing one thing. It is teamwork. It is a community that solved the problem. It's collaboration. It's people having various different backgrounds and coming from different areas from all over the world in order to solve problems. So making sure that we have the right space and the right tools so that people can collaborate together. People's opinions are valued. We're asking folks that have 40 years of experience what they think about solving a problem. We're asking somebody that might have just gotten here and graduated from school who's a new employee what they think

they can contribute and how they would solve a problem. So having that diverse set of opinions in order to solve and create breakthroughs in science and mission is probably the most amazing things at the laboratory. It's rare to find an institution that attracts such a broad range of talent as Lawrence Livermore. The lab has brought together people from different nations, different backgrounds, and different fields and industries, all working together in service of something bigger. We've had just an enormous impact, and I think we want to continue to have enormous impact for good. That's Pat Falcone, the Deputy Director of Science and Technology at the lab.

It's really a place where people are in service to excellence and to national needs and international needs, finding this knowledge and using it and making things and designing things and inventing things and ideas and testing them out to solve problems, real problems. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a vital part of both national security and basic and applied research. In short, it's where the impossible becomes possible, where big ideas come to life. In short, it's where the impossible becomes possible. Where big ideas come to life. 70 plus years in the making, and this story has only just begun. But we can't focus on where Lawrence Livermore is going until we first know where it came from.

While the lab is certainly an American success story, it wasn't always this way. In the early days of the laboratory, they had a really difficult time. They were failing. The first three tests were failures. Everyone was a bit nervous. This is the third straight failure. And people in Washington and Los Alamos are calling to shut down the laboratory. Thank you for tuning in to Big Ideas Lab. If you loved what you heard, please let us know by leaving a rating and review. And if you haven't already, don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app to keep up with our latest episode. Thanks for listening. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is opening its doors to a new wave of talent.

Whether you're a scientist, an IT professional, a welder, an administrative or business professional, or an engineer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has an opportunity for you. From enhancing national security to pioneering new energy sources and advancing scientific frontiers, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is where you can make your mark on the world. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's culture is rooted in collaboration, innovation, and the pursuit of excellence. We offer a work environment that supports your professional growth and a benefits package that looks after your well-being and future. Are you ready to contribute to work that matters? Visit llnl.gov forward slash careers to explore

current job openings and learn more about the application process. Don't miss the chance to be a part of a mission driven team working on projects that make the impossible possible. Visit LLNL.gov forward slash careers now to view the current job listings. Remember, that's LLNL.gov forward slash careers. Your expertise could be the highlight of our next podcast interview. Don't wait. Explore the possibilities today.