60 years of achievements to be celebrated at Sandia National Labs mid-December

Sandia National Laboratories’ R&D California site grew out of the Manhattan Project during World War II. It was designated as a national laboratory in 1979 thirty years after President Harry Truman made it in an independent laboratory. It is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratory complex and is managed by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

On December 17th at 10 a.m., Sandia National Laboratories’ California site will celebrate 60 years of laboratory achievements. A wide range of technologies and programs developed from Sandia’s national security mission will be showcased.

“This is a unique opportunity to recognize the role that our researchers have played throughout the years in scientific innovation and national security,” said Rick Stulen, vice president of Sandia’s California site.

As counterterrorism efforts are being discussed more in the media and among policymakers, it's worth noting Sandia’s 2008 White Paper: Homeland Security. In addressing counterterrorism problems, one of six recommendations Sandia makes is to develop robust processes to transition promising R&D concepts into operation. Another recommendation is to develop a comprehensive review of different governance structures to determine the best ways to integrate the national R&D community – academia, industry and labs. Sandia suggests that a systems approach to homeland security is needed which includes a sufficient long-term investment for the U.S. to have the sustained and knowledgeable science and technology workforce, and appropriate facilities to address homeland threats.

Some of Sandia’s main accomplishments in 2009 include Sandia researcher Cy Fujimoto’s development of a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell that is different than typical PEMs in that it uses a different material that will allow it to be used in hydrogen cars in both dry and humid environments (unlike current PEMs). In June, Sandia reported that recent tests had shown that the Sandia polymer outperformed current state of the art fuel cells in two categories. In order to meet automakers’ needs, Fujimoto has been making adjustments in order to be able to work in both environments.

“You can be moving right along and then come to a place where the path breaks. A person walking the path can maneuver around the break and move on. Not so with protons. They come to a dead end,” he says. “Automobile manufacturers want a membrane that is reliable in all environments. They can’t have one that functions well in a humid climate like Miami, for example, and not work well in dry Albuquerque.”

His challenge has been how to scale up the chemistry so that the membrane can be mass-produced at a low cost.

“We have to get the cost of manufacturing the membrane below $25 per square meter for the method to be practical for cars,” Fujimoto says. “This is one of the biggest challenges yet.”

In terms of cyber security research findings, Sandia has made a significant achievement in successfully demonstrating for the first time the ability to run more than a million Linux kernels as virtual machines. A kernel is the central component of most computer operating systems. The achievement will allow cyber security researchers to more effectively observe behavior found in malicious botnets, or networks of infected machines that can operate on the scale of a million nodes. Since cyber researchers want to improve their understanding of how botnets work and stop them in their tracks before cyber attacks occur, running a high volume of virtual machines on one supercomputer makes this possible. A virtual machine is a set of software programs that run on one computer and act collectively as they perform as a separate, complete unit.

According to Sandia’s Ron Minnich, the more kernels that can be run at once, the more effective cyber security professionals can be in combating the global botnet problem. Both Dell and IBM made key technical contributions to the experiments. Sandia’s research has lasted two years and was funded by NNSA’s Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (ASC).

“Eventually, we would like to be able to emulate the computer network of a small nation, or even one as large as the United States, in order to ‘virtualize’ and monitor a cyber attack,” he said.

Sandia researchers are hoping to create models of parts of the Internet by using millions to tens of millions of operating systems.

“The sheer size of the Internet makes it very difficult to understand in even a limited way,” said Minnich. “Many phenomena occurring on the Internet are poorly understood, because we lack the ability to model it adequately. By running actual operating system instances to represent nodes on the Internet, we will be able not just to simulate the functioning of the Internet at the network level, but to emulate Internet functionality.”

Sandia researchers see the great potential in virtualization based on enabling multiple operating systems on a single platform.

Finally, in September, Sandia chose Boston Dynamics, to develop Sandia’s next generation of the Precision Urban Hopper. According to Jon Salton, “The Precision Urban Hopper is part of a broad effort to bolster the capabilities of troops and special forces engaged in urban combat, giving them new ways to operate unfettered in the urban canyon.”

How? The jumper can get over obstacles of more than 25 feet, will navigate unmanned via GPS by hopping and on wheels, adapts to the urban environment in real time, is lightweight and small, and is meant to decrease the number of casualties in combat. The development program will be funded by Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, and delivery is planned for late 2010.

Should be interesting to see what is showcased on December 17th at Sandia's Livermore campus.

For more info, visit: www.sandia.gov