Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory



Exploring NIF’s Strange New Worlds

It might be hard to imagine now, with NIF smoothly operating nearly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but work integration manager Michelle Davalos remembers a time when NIF was run from a hectic strategy room that she called “Thunderdome.”

Michelle Davalos
Michelle Davalos

“I came on (to NIF) during commissioning,” she says. “We were still in the construction and commissioning phase; it felt like a startup, in a sense. Scheduling was done on a whiteboard—it was ballistic, every day.”

Davalos recalls that “everything went through the strategy room,” where facility staff then gathered for work control. Beginning her work with NIF in 2007 as administrative assistant to then-Commissioning Manager (now Operations Manager) Bruno Van Wonterghem, Davalos cut her teeth on the thrills and stresses of bringing the world’s most energetic laser online.

“It (Thunderdome) was the hub of the building,” she says. “It was really exciting.”

She first came to Lawrence Livermore after a fateful dinner with her mother-in-law, Gloria Davalos, who retired after 23 years as an administrator at the Laboratory. The elder Davalos mentioned NIF, and the spark was lit.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute—you have a big laser?’” Davalos remembers. “I did my own research, and I really felt like NIF was a place that I needed to be. I was really attracted to our mission and just felt like this was it.”

It didn’t hurt that her father had worked in aerospace when she was young, exposing her to technology and engineering at an early age. Today she’s responsible for top-level planning for facility maintenance and reconfiguration, or FM&R, which represents one-third of facility time on NIF. The laser is non-operational for experiments during FM&R periods, so crews can perform hundreds of preventive maintenance activities and upgrades to the system.

In 2011, Davalos moved out of her administrative assistant role and began helping with NIF tours and access. This was a period when she had begun pursuing an associate’s degree at Las Positas College in Livermore.

Michelle Davalos Leads a NIF TourDavalos takes students on a tour of NIF during a White House-sponsored “My Brother’s Keeper” Lab Day at LLNL in June 2015. Credit: Jason Laurea

Then Hollywood came to the Laboratory: In 2013, Paramount Pictures’ “Star Trek Into Darkness” cast NIF as the warp core of the U.S.S. Enterprise. At first she didn’t believe the Lab would allow filming to take place, but the timing ended up coinciding nicely with a planned FM&R and the “once in a lifetime situation” was accommodated without significantly impacting NIF’s commissioning and operation.

“Nothing will ever compare to Star Trek,” Davalos says. “I went to management and said, ‘I want to be a part of this—give me a role.’ And they gave me one of the hardest ones.”

As resource project manager, Davalos had to schedule the stewards from across NIF who were responsible for understanding Paramount’s filming parameters: don't damage the laser, pay attention to safety, and protect proprietary information. Getting staffers not to stop cast members and ask for an autograph was one of the hardest parts of the job, she says.

“They were 16-hour days. I’m not joking,” she says. “It was a hardcore project, but one of the most pivotal moments in my career.”

Star Trek Stars Debate in the NIF Target BayWith the U.S.S. Enterprise warp core (NIF Target Chamber) in the background, Scotty (Simon Pegg, left) and Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine) debate their next move.

With renewed resolve, Davalos went on to finish her associate’s degree at Las Positas and continue on to the University of San Francisco (USF). She graduated on May 19 with a bachelor’s degree in management, completing a lifelong dream. All the while, she was accumulating more roles at Livermore, including calibration manager and overseeing the warehouse and tool crib. Three years later, she moved on to her current role.

“The Star Trek project was the biggest eye-opener for me, helping me realize what I’m able to do,” Davalos says. “I knew I was capable of a lot of different things and juggling priorities.”

Number one among those priorities is her family. Only hours after she graduated from USF, she took her husband and nieces to see the singer P!nk perform at Oracle Arena in Oakland. Recent trips have taken her to Mexico, Arizona, and Alabama, along with a March trip with USF to Dubai. “I put my family above everything—even above school and work. If they need me, I’m there.”

LLNL Graduates of USF School of ManagementDavalos (left) joins fellow LLNL graduates at the University of San Francisco’s May 19 School of Management graduation (from left): Adrian Miller, Brant Hancock, Amanda Clark, Melissa Poulos, and Dave Hopkins.

Reliability and determination are trademarks of Davalos’s reputation around the Laboratory. In 2017, she extended her versatile track record as project manager for building NIF’s unique Optical Thomson Scattering Laser room.

“That’s one of the things I appreciate about NIF management,” she says. “They give me all the unique jobs. They empower me to continue growing professionally and academically. It’s difficult to pursue your dreams without a strong support system—I’m fortunate to have it at home and at work.”

Balancing a full-time career with family and school may seem like a lot, but Davalos is up for the challenge, whether it’s excelling in Thunderdome, protecting the Enterprise, or hosting schoolchildren on a tour of the Target Bay. “It’s not like I have to be busy, but I like to be busy,” she says. “I’m going to take a year off and go back for my master’s degree. I’m not entirely done yet.”

—Ben Kennedy

June 2018