Lab Partnering Service Discovery

Mr. Balsmeier has over 15 years of experience in the nuclear industry including reactor core manufacturing, design engineering, project engineering/management, and nuclear construction. He is currently the Nuclear Remote Systems Department Manager at the Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC). Mr. Balsmeier began his career in 2003 as an Officer in the United States Navy. Mr. Balsmeier was assigned as an engineer at Naval Reactor Headquarters, NAVSEA 08, supporting reactor core manufacturing and development. After his Naval service, Mr. Balsmeier started as a project and design engineer for the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in 2008. He focused on plant modifications to support experiments while at ATR. Mr. Balsmeier joined Westinghouse Electric Company in 2011 as a project support engineer for construction of the lead AP1000 plant, Sanmen 1 in Zhejiang, China. While at Sanmen, he focused on reactor plant piping installation and construction of the containment vessel and shield building. In 2014, Mr Balsmeier returned to INL working as an engineer at MFC. While at MFC, he participated in numerous modifications of the Hot Fuels Examination Facility, facility modifications and buildout of research capabilities in the Irradiated Materials Characterization Laboratory, and most recently as an engineering manager. Mr. Balsmeier holds a BS degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Kansas and a MS in Engineering Science from the Naval Postgraduate School. Mr. Balsmeier is a licensed Professional Engineer. 

An assistant scientist in Argonne National Laboratory’s Center for Molecular Engineering and Materials Science Division.

My research focus is on point-defects (vacancies and dopants) in various semiconductors (Si, SiC, Y2O3, etc.) for material science and quantum information processing. I am interested in searching for the optimal defects and substrates depending on their applications, expanding on state-of-the-art understanding of charge, optical and spin properties. Applications include hybrid spin-mechanical quantum systems, decoherence mitigation, quantum communication and quantum and classical sensing. 

In 2008, I received my bachelor’s degree in applied physics from ENS Cachan and Université Paris 11, Orsay. I went on to receive my master’s in nanophysics in 2011 from the Saclay Campus near Paris and my Ph.D. in quantum physics in 2015 from the University of Oxford. From 2015 to 2019, I performed research as a postdoctoral fellow in the Awschalom group at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. There, my research focused on spin defects in silicon carbide and related hybrid systems for quantum information. 

My research has led to a patent application for technology related to charge conversion of defects in solid-state materials, and I have published more than 20 papers in high-impact journals.

Dr. Sujit Bidhar graduated with his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2012 specializing in fatigue, fracture mechanics, and finite element modelling in aluminium die cast. He is currently working at Fermilab where he is involved in new target material research and development, developing material models for future high energy beam target materials subjected to thermal shock, and nuclear irradiation damage to predict target lifetime. Dr. Bidhar has set up a lab-scale electrospinning unit and successfully fabricated different ceramic, metallic, and polymeric nanofibers; he is currently designing micromechanical experiments to evaluate single nanofiber mechanical properties using SEM, FIB, and AFM techniques. In the past, he has worked at the University of Tokyo as a researcher in the field of impact analysis on jet engine turbine blade made up of FRP composites, large scale finite element simulation on super computers using LS-DYNA. He has research interest and experience in computational mechanics, solid mechanics, structural analysis, fatigue and fracture, stress analysis, very large scale finite element simulations, image Based Finite Element Method using ANSYS,VOXELCON,LS-DYNA,ABAQUS, FrontISTR,HYPERMESH, MATLAB, Fatigue testing, X-ray CT. He also has experience in conducting experiments at high temperature and pressure environment, various metallurgical laboratory works, SEM micrographs, EDX, RAMAN spectroscopy, Slow strain rate tests.

Martin Suchara is a computational scientist at Argonne National Laboratory with expertise in quantum computing. His research focuses on quantum communication and networking, quantum error correction, quantum simulations, and optimizations of the quantum computing software stack.

Prior to joining Argonne, Martin worked at AT&T Labs and received postdoctoral training in quantum computing from UC Berkeley and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Martin received his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University.

Dr. Mark Bryden is the founding director of the Simulation, Modeling and Decision Science program at Ames Laboratory and is a professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State University. Dr. Bryden’s research is focused on the federation of information from disparate sources (e.g., models, data, and other information elements) to create detailed models of engineered, human, and natural systems that enable engineering decision making for these complex systems. Dr. Bryden has published more than 180 peer-reviewed articles and co-authored the textbook Combustion Engineering. He has founded two successful startups based on his research work, and he has founded the nonprofit ETHOS, a community of 150+ researchers focused on meeting the needs for clean village energy in the developing world. He has received three patents, three R&D 100 awards, two Regional Excellence in Technology Transfer awards, and a National Excellence in Technology Transfer award. In 2013 he and his coauthors received the ASME Melville Medal. His professional experience includes three years as an engineer and 11 years as a manager at Westinghouse Electric in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In addition, for more than 15 years Professor Bryden has worked on energy systems for the poor in a number of developing countries. 

A senior research fellow in the Biosciences Center, Dr. Michael Himmel has more than 35 years of experience in conducting, supervising, and planning research in: protein biochemistry, recombinant technology, enzyme engineering, new micro-organism discovery, and physicochemistry of macromolecules.

Dr. Himmel has supervised research that targets the application of site-directed mutagenesis and rational protein design to the stabilization and improvement of important industrial enzymes, especially glycosyl hydrolases. He has functioned as PI for the DOE EERE Office of the Biomass Program (OBP) since 1992, and his responsibilities have included: research to improve cellulase performance; reducing biomass pretreatment costs; and improving yields of fermentable sugars. Dr. Himmel also developed new facilities at NREL for biomass conversion research, including a Cellulase Biochemistry Laboratory, a Biomass Surface Characterization Laboratory, a Protein Crystallography Laboratory, and a new Computational Science Team.

During the past three decades, Dr. Himmel contributed 345 peer reviewed journal articles to the literature. In addition, he has edited eight books and been awarded 25 patents. He has organized or co-organized 15 international conferences on aspects of biotechnology and biomass conversion. In 2008, Dr. Himmel edited a new book for Blackwell Publishers entitled "Biomass Recalcitrance," which is listed as a top selling book in science and has now been translated into Chinese. He served as chair for the new Gordon Research Conference on cellulases and cellulosomes in 2003 and continues to support the conference. Dr. Himmel currently works closely with the biomass conversion industry, as demonstrated by the numerous CRADAs currently underway in his NREL laboratory.

Dr. Robert O’Brien is an internationally recognized Principal Nuclear Scientist/Engineer who has focused his career on the development of advanced materials and energy systems in addition to the manufacturing processes to produce materials for harsh environments Dr. O’Brien received a PhD in the nuclear engineering and physics of radioisotope and nuclear power / propulsion systems for space exploration from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. Under his PhD research project, Dr. O’Brien proposed the use of americium-based radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) and developed Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) Electric Field Assisted Sintering Techniques (EFAST) for the encapsulation of nuclear materials for both RTGs and nuclear reactor fuels. Dr. O’Brien also received a Masters degree in Physics with Space Science and technology from the University of Leicester. Dr. O’Brien’s research and programmatic management experience in advanced manufacturing of harsh environment materials, space systems and instrumentation design/development, defense systems, nuclear fuel performance, nuclear instrumentation, nuclear safety, irradiation testing, radioisotope source design, and nuclear power system design and development. 

Dr. O’Brien currently serves as the Director of Advanced Manufacturing for the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Under this role, Dr O’Brien’s leadership extends across all of the Directorates of the laboratory; Energy & Environment Science & Technology, Nuclear Science & Technology, National & Homeland Security, Materials & Fuels Complex, Advanced Test Reactor, and Industry Engagement.  

Haruko Wainwright received her MS in nuclear engineering (2006), MA in statistics (2010), and PhD in nuclear engineering (2010) at University of California, Berkeley. Her initial research interest was to investigate the environmental impact of nuclear waste and nuclear weapon productions. Her PhD dissertation focused on Bayesian geostatistical inverse modeling for subsurface characterization at the uranium-contaminated DOE Hanford site. Since then, she has broadened her research interest to various environmental problems, including Arctic ecosystem responses to climate change, groundwater contamination, and deep-subsurface CO2 storage. In addition to working in many interdisciplinary projects, she is a deputy lead of the site application thrust in the Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management project, leading the site application at the Savannah River Site F-Area. She is also on the leadership team of Institute for Resilient Communities, which aims to prepare communities for radiological and other disasters through research, education and outreach activities.

For more information: https://eesa.lbl.gov/profiles/haruko-murakami-wainwright/

COVID-19-related research: "Using Machine Learning to Estimate COVID-19’s Seasonal Cycle"

John W. Freiderich is an applied technology scientist at the Y-12 National Security Complex. He specializes in the advanced processing of non-radiological and nuclear materials. His scientific areas of expertise include electrochemistry, ionic liquids/molten salts, aqueous solution chemistry, and various spectroscopic methods. Freiderich has developed and patented technologies related to the improvement of consumer-relevant materials and processes during his tenure. These technologies include rare earth extractive metallurgy, mineral electrowinning, high-throughput molten salt reactor material production, advanced sensor development, and electroplating methods. He holds a Ph.D. in radiochemistry from Washington State University and a B.S. in chemistry from Minnesota State University.

Title: HPC Application Architect

Expertise:

• Docking
• Molecular dynamics
• Density Functional Theory Code Development
• Parallel programming (GNU parallel, MPI, OpenMP, PGAS models, etc.)

Hubertus (Huub) van Dam is a computational chemist with expertise in docking and molecular dynamics simulations. In prior work he has collaborated on improving the accuracy of docking calculations by using ab-initio molecular potentials for the electrostatic part of docking scores (DOI: 10.1063/1.2793399). He is currently supporting the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory (NVBL) effort to find COVID-19 drug candidates using Autodock 4.2, Dock 6 and DeepDriveMD. He also has extensive expertise in writing and supporting large parallel quantum chemistry packages. Currently, he serves as Testing and Assessment Task Lead on the Exascale Computing Project’s NWChemEx effort. NWChemEx is providing a community infrastructure for computational chemistry that takes full advantage of exascale computing technologies.