One of the Lab’s Stewardship values is that of team science. As our Stewardship website explains, this value is important because innovative solutions to complex problems arise from a diversity of thought, approaches, experiences, and roles.
For many people, team science is the interdisciplinary scientific collaboration across Research Areas, a tradition that started with Ernest Lawrence, who practiced team science for large, complex scientific challenges. Less talked about are the collaborations between Research Areas and non-research functions at the Lab. Yet such collaborations are critical to the Lab: a few examples below illustrate these key relationships.
Partners in Safety
Cyclotron Road, a Division of the Energy Technologies Area (ETA) that provides support to entrepreneurial scientists accepted into its program, has been working closely with Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) and other Areas to meet the safety needs of the scientists in the program. Cyclotron Road fellows are affiliates; they take training to become familiar with the Lab’s stringent safety measures, are embedded in various Areas at the Lab (each of which have specific safety requirements), and are working against tight deadlines (projects end within two years). With these complex situations, collaboration on safety oversight became a top priority, and the Division set its mind to ensuring that all safety gaps were addressed.
Ron Scholtz, ETA’s EH&S representative, and Joey Silveira, Cyclotron Road’s safety lead, have been working side by side with Division Director Tom Kirchstetter, Program Manager Melanie Sonsteng, and the research fellows to first identify the key stakeholders across the Areas and at Cyclotron Road that need to be engaged, and then the specific needs of the research team. Once these stakeholders and project needs are identified, the team can then work together on solutions.
“With Cyclotron Road projects, there’s no one-size-fits-all, so it is important to know which safety systems come into play,” said Melanie. “Identifying the key players and introducing them to each other at the outset is important, as is communicating early and often.” Working closely in this manner with all the relevant Areas and EH&S, Cyclotron Road has significantly improved its safety oversight and strengthened cross-divisional relationships. These safety scenarios have also illuminated Lab-wide improvement opportunities that will ultimately enable safer collaborations across Areas. Addressing the issues together has increased transparency and communication, and streamlined procedures.
ALS-U: A Barn Raising Effort
Most Lab employees know about the Advanced Light Source Upgrade project (ALS-U), which will enable the production of highly focused beams of soft X-ray light that are at least 100 times brighter than those of the existing ALS. The project involves a great many people at the Lab, not unlike community barn-raising efforts in rural America a hundred years ago.
According to Andrew Netto, ALS-U Division’s Deputy of Operations, the Division only has 17 full-time staff, but about 150 people from other Divisions and functions are working on the project, including Engineering, ALS, and Accelerator Technology and Applied Physics Division (ATAP) staff, as well as Facilities and outside support from contractors.
“It’s a huge, $590 million, multi-year project with lots of moving pieces,” said Andrew. “An important part of working with such a large team is communications.” The ALS-U team communicates regularly, not just with the matrixed staff assigned to the project, but with their supervisors and Division Directors, as well as the user community. Through town hall meetings with the ALS user community and all-hands meetings with the project team, the team communicates important events, milestone achievements and scheduled activities. They also hold regular meetings with Engineering and ALS to discuss personnel and resource requirements.
The ALS-U team also works closely with Facilities to ensure that infrastructure is in place when it is needed. For example, the assembly shop floor and high bay in Building 77 have to be ready for the ALS-U project to build and fabricate the new accumulator and storage ring sectors that will be part of the new system. The upgraded ALS will consist of a new state of the art storage ring in the existing tunnel optimized for low emittance, high soft X-ray brightness and coherent flux as well as a new accumulator ring. The ALS-U project has been provided by the Lab with 20,000 square feet of storage space at the Lab’s new warehouse located in Richmond. This space will help support the project’s need to store the new arc sectors as well as harvested ALS equipment that will be reinstalled in the new facility.
“There are many dependencies, and our partnership with Facilities is critical to our project staying on track,” said Andrew.
Welcoming the Speaker of the House to the Lab
This February, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited the Lab, the first time in the Lab’s history that a House Speaker has done so. The call came to the Government & Community Relations Office, but making it all happen involved many people from the Research Areas as well as the Protocol Office, Strategic Communications, Facilities, Site Security, the Projects & Infrastructure Management Division, and Information Technology, among others.
The event was an opportunity to highlight the Lab’s role in the development of cutting-edge semiconductor technology, a key pillar for the U.S. economy and technological leadership. Patrick Naulleau, director of the Lab’s Center for X-Ray Optics, highlighted the role that the Center plays in developing the next generation of chip manufacturing technology. He shared how the Lab worked with industry to develop and fully commercialize extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, performing more than two decades of research using extreme ultraviolet light from the ALS to develop the technology to print circuits that are only a few nanometers wide.
Materials Staff Scientist Sinéad Griffin and Lab semiconductor consultant Dan Armbrust also spoke with the visitors while ALS Director Steve Kevan and ALS Director of Communications Ashley White led tours of the user facility. Biochemist Faculty Scientist and Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, an ALS user, also participated in the tour and shared how the ALS’s protein crystallography capabilities have enabled her research in CRISPR gene editing.
Facilities also jumped in to provide support. There was a lot to do, from cleaning up beamline areas to clearing tour paths to ensuring there were no trip hazards. Site security partnered with the Speaker’s team to ensure tight security for the Speaker and the other VIPs at the event.
With the high profile speakers in attendance, the Lab also arranged a press conference to highlight the legislative goals of the America Competes Act of 2022. Strategic Communications invited media, staffed the event, and publicized it on social media, while a videographer and photographer recorded the event.
Ultimately, more than 120 people at the Lab supported the event—many of whom were behind the scenes but were critical to the success of the event. “It was a group effort, one that highlighted our activities in microelectronics and underscored the importance of our work to the nation,” said Patrick.