Sandia National Laboratories

A realistic day in the life 🧑💻 Sandia software and machine learning engineer Doug McGeehan shares a look at his typical workday at the Labs. Doug started his Sandia career as an intern after grad school and now develops software and advanced AI models for GPS. #Eweek #EngineersWeek #NationalEngineersWeek #DayInTheLife #DITL #realistic #RealisticDayInTheLife

A realistic day in the life 🧑💻 Sandia manager and electrical engineer James Hunter shares a typical workday at the Labs, where he leads a team supporting the nation’s deterrence mission. James’ interest in engineering started as a boy, helping his dad restore vintage cars by scouring junkyards and rebuilding engines in California. “It kind of gave me an appreciation for how people build, design and engineer systems,” James said. #Eweek #EngineersWeek #NationalEngineersWeek #DayInTheLife #DITL #realistic #RealisticDayInTheLife

A look back at Sandia’s early space engineering 🛰️ Tucked away in Sandia’s archives are hand-drawn engineering sketches from the Vela satellite era in the 1960s that capture some of the Labs’ earliest work supporting space-based monitoring. “We have a very decent historical evolution story about Vela,” said John Kiegel, who oversees Sandia’s National Security Technology Gallery. “For anybody who works on satellites in Global Security, this is their origin story. This is how Sandia got started in space-based monitoring.” In 1962, President John F. Kennedy visited Sandia to learn about the Vela satellite program, and the first Vela Hotel satellite pair successfully launched a year later. Sandia worked closely with Los Alamos National Laboratory on component integration, data processing and sensor design. The sketchbooks are a reminder of what engineers accomplished with paper and pencil and how far Sandia’s engineering capabilities have come. Read more in celebration of #EngineersWeek: https://bit.ly/4rzrsoR

A realistic day in the life 👩💻 In celebration of #EngineersWeek, Sandia manager and electrical engineer Emily Schrock shares a look at her typical workday at the Labs. In addition to her management role, Emily conducts experimental lab work with pulsed-power systems at Sandia. Her interest in engineering was sparked at an early age while visiting job sites in Texas with her dad, who is an electrical engineer. #eWeek #eWeek2026 #NationalEngineersWeek #DayInTheLife #DITL #realistic #RealisticDayInTheLife

It’s National Engineers Week! ⚙️ Sandia’s engineering excellence starts with our people. Nearly half of our workforce are engineers, bringing diverse expertise to deliver exceptional service in the national interest. Whether the mission is nuclear deterrence or energy security, engineering research is at the core of our work to deliver critical solutions. View photos of the engineers and innovations driving Sandia’s mission: https://bit.ly/4b0XnZr #eWeek #eWeek2026 #EngineersWeek #NationalEngineersWeek

Eight wins at the 2025 R&D 100 Awards 👏 The annual R&D World awards recognize 100 of the year’s most significant technological advancements worldwide. Many of Sandia’s winning projects focus on sensing, measurement and detection and improving decision-making in extreme conditions, while others advance materials and diagnostics that help scientists study how systems behave under intense heat, pressure or electrical stress. “This is a big year for Sandia,” said Doug Kothe, associate laboratories director and Sandia’s chief research officer. “The R&D 100 Awards are sometimes called the ‘Oscars of invention’ because they are so competitive. Winning eight in one year is incredible. It’s a new record for the Labs.” The award winners are: ⚡Electro-optical sensor for high-energy environments and applications 🩻 Colorized Hyperspectral X-Ray Imaging with Multi-Metal Targets, or CHXI-MMT 🔍 Fentanyl Analog Independent Detector, or FAID 🌡️ Low coefficient of thermal expansion molecules for polymers 🔋 Hafnia gate dielectrics for energy conversion 🩸 Bleeding materials and enclosures ⏱️ Time-resolved diffraction for the National Ignition Facility 🏅 2025 R&D 100 Researcher of the Year: Hongyou Fan, Sandia materials scientist In the photo, physicist Israel Owens smiles with Sandia’s electro-optical sensor. It uses a dime-sized crystal and compact laser beam to measure voltages up to 20 million volts without physical contact. Its applications include lightning and high-energy physics research and electrical utility monitoring. Read more about the winners: https://bit.ly/4qKFqCY

Designing cities and tackling food waste 🏙️ Sandia hosted a Future City Competition, where middle school students imagined a world where food was not only abundant, but also responsibly stewarded from farm to table. “This competition was a fantastic opportunity for students to think critically about real-world problems and apply engineering and science to create innovative solutions,” said Justin Teo, a fleet manager at Sandia and coordinator for the New Mexico event. Read more about the statewide engineering competition: https://bit.ly/4bSRNcC

Cutting down manufacturing time at CAMINO 💥 Sandia is celebrating the opening of its new unclassified Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation. CAMINO will serve as a hub supporting expedited design, prototyping and manufacturing of components essential to the nuclear security enterprise’s mission. “CAMINO reflects how we will operate going forward,” Labs Director Laura McGill said. “We must be integrated across disciplines, connected across organizations and focused on delivering at the pace national security demands of us.” In the photo, a wire electrical discharge machine cuts a baseplate that was printed during an additive manufacturing demonstration at CAMINO. Read more about CAMINO’s capabilities: https://bit.ly/3OseEC0

NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams visited Sandia last week, touring state-of-the-art facilities with Labs Director Laura McGill and meeting the teams driving innovative research and engineering for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and our national security mission. During the visit, Administrator Williams also spoke at the ribbon-cutting for the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Innovation, or CAMINO, which will help speed up prototyping and shorten development cycles.

Fueling the future with yesterday’s leftovers 🔋 Sandia researchers are designing porous liquids that can selectively capture methane and other valuable chemicals from food scraps, manure, sewage and other waste. “This could provide a supplemental domestic energy source to support U.S. energy independence,” Sandia materials engineer Jessica Rimsza said. “There are hundreds of thousands of porous materials and there are tens of thousands of solvents, so there’s a vast untapped number of possible combinations from which to form porous liquids.” Porous liquids are a relatively recent discovery, first theorized in 2007 and realized in 2015. Sandia’s research has focused on expanding the possibilities of these materials for energy applications by characterizing their behavior and studying new combinations targeted for high gas absorption. The team has already created dozens of porous liquids that could one day support biogas capture at places like wastewater treatment plants and agricultural facilities. Read more about separating methane from the mix: https://bit.ly/4kFmdS3