Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - Key Accomplishments

Key Accomplishments

Over its 60-year history, Lawrence Livermore has made many scientific and technological achievements, including:

• Critical contributions to the U.S. nuclear deterrence through the design of nuclear weapons to meet military requirements and, since the mid-1990s, through the Stockpile Stewardship Program, by which the safety and reliability of the enduring stockpile is ensured without underground nuclear testing.
• Design, construction, and operation of a series of ever larger, more powerful, and more capable laser systems, culminating in the 192-beam National Ignition Facility (NIF), completed in 2009.
• Advances in particle accelerator and fusion technology, including magnetic fusion, Free-electron lasers, accelerator mass spectrometry, and inertial confinement fusion.
• Breakthroughs in high-performance computing, including the development of novel concepts for massively parallel computing and the design and application of computers that can carry out hundreds of trillions of operations per second.
• Development of technologies and systems for detecting nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, and explosive threats to prevent and mitigate WMD proliferation and terrorism.
• Development of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) for fabricating next-generation computer chips.
• First-ever detection of massive compact halo objects (MACHOs), a suspected but previously undetected component of dark matter.
• Advances in genomics, biotechnology, and biodetection, including major contributions to the complete sequencing of the human genome though the Joint Genome Institute and the development of rapid PCR (polymerase chain reaction) technology that lies at the heart of today’s most advanced DNA detection instruments.
• Development and operation of the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC), which provides real-time, multi-scale (global, regional, local, urban) modeling of hazardous materials released into the atmosphere.
• Development of highest resolution global climate models and contributions to the International Panel on Climate Change which, together with former vice president Al Gore, was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
• Co-discoverers of new superheavy elements 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, and 118.
• Invention of new healthcare technologies, including a microelectrode array for construction of an artificial retina, a miniature glucose sensor for the treatment of diabetes, and a compact proton therapy system for radiation therapy.

On July 17, 2009 LLNL announced that the Laboratory had captured eight R&D 100 Awards – more than it had ever received in the annual competition. The previous LLNL record of seven awards was reached five times – in 1987, 1988, 1997, 1998 and 2006.

Also known as the “Oscars of invention”, the awards are given each year for the development of cutting-edge scientific and engineering technologies with commercial potential.

The awards raises LLNL’s total to 129 since 1978. The winning technologies were:

• GeMini Spectrometer
• Artificial Retina — Restoring Sight to the Blind
• The ROSE compiler framework
• The Babel Middleware
• The FemtoScope: A Time Microscope
• ROSE: Making Compiler Technology Accessible to all Programmers
• Land Mine Locator: Eradicating the Aftermath of War
• Laser Beam Centering and Pointing System
• Spectral Sentry — Protecting High-Intensity Lasers from Bandwidth-Related Damage
• Precision Robotic Assembly Machine — for Building Nuclear Fusion Ignition Targets