LLNL intern Kristen Young, left, NIF & PS Summer Scholar Kaavy Nimmakayala, and Lab intern Grace Steward chat with Summer Scholar Program leaders Zhi Liao (second from right) and Reggie Drachenberg after a NIF & PS seminar, one of a series held throughout the summer to give all LLNL interns an opportunity to learn about NIF & PS programs. Credit: Mark Meamber
(Download Image)Summer Scholar Program Tops 500 Participants
When he was 20 years old Andy Bayramian came to LLNL as a summer intern, intent on changing the world. Two decades and three groundbreaking lasers later, he’s still here.
And to the 47 NIF & Photon Science summer scholars now on site and working one-on-one with mentors—much as Bayramian did as an intern—he offers this advice:
"Get involved. If you are, people will help you. This is the world’s best place to work because you get to make a difference. We’re setting records and making things that are unheard of in the rest of the world," added Bayramian, now a physicist in the Advanced Photon Technologies Program.
The Laboratory has a long-standing tradition of working with students of all ages and stages of their academic development. The NIF & PS Summer Scholar Program has taken that internship tradition and formalized it into a program created by laser physicist Zhi Liao, a former Lab intern himself.
Since 2005, the number of NIF & PS summer scholars has topped 500.
"I wanted to give the students a meaningful collaborative experience to build relationships with their peers," explained Liao, who has contributed to many of LLNL’s successful laser projects including NIF, the Mercury high-repetition-rate laser, and the Laser Guide Star. With his passion for training next-generation scientists and engineers, Liao has moved into a leadership position at NIF & PS in workforce development initiatives.
The current Summer Scholar Program director is Derrek "Reggie" Drachenberg, a NIF & PS fiber-laser scientist who has worked on high-profile research teams including one that won a prestigious R&D 100 Award for innovation. He now leads an exploratory research project to develop high-power lasers at retina-safe wavelengths.
The summer scholars work on independent research projects matched to the students’ areas of academic interest and LLNL needs, ranging from high energy density (HED) physics and national security applications to optics, mathematics, and a variety of engineering disciplines. They produce scientific research posters that will be on display in early August, following the scientific practice. Profiles of several students will appear in future editions of NIF & Photon Science News.
Drachenberg works with a team of NIF & PS scientists including Louisa Pickworth, an HED diagnostics scientist, who runs the Summer Scholar Seminar series; Rajesh Raman, who studies laser-materials interactions and organizes outside tours; and Sam Schrauth, a NIF postdoctoral student who works on laser propagation simulations and organizes the on-site career panel. Krista Ladner from the NIF & PS Directorate Office provides administrative support across the program.
This summer’s students range in age from occasional high school students to undergraduates and graduate students. Their compensation runs from $3,000 to $6,000 per month except for ROTC, active-duty military, and military service academy students.
"As part of our effort to expand the program," said Jeff Atherton, NIF & PS principal deputy principal associate director, "we have focused on enhancing diversity, including engagement with Norfolk State University, which has programs that align with the Lab’s. This year we have about 30 percent female and minority participation—an encouraging step in the right direction," he said.
The NIF & PS summer interns can take advantage of special tours of local tech meccas like Pixar and Google. The program also offers summer seminars with NIF & PS leaders discussing key programs such as ultra-intense lasers, efforts to achieve ignition on NIF, target fabrication, and NIF Discovery Science experiments.
"The students really respond to the weekly seminars," said Drachenberg, "getting together with everyone else and hearing about programs that are different from what they might be working on in their own lab." Plus, he brings cookies.
Drachenberg works with Liao to help provide the program with more enrichment for their eight- to 12-week programs with the help of outreach administrator Krista Ladner. Drachenberg is building a private social media network as well, for current and former students to communicate and to track alumni.
The NIF & PS internships are keenly competitive, with only about 10 percent of applicants generally gaining acceptance. What attracted Bayramian to apply when he was an undergraduate at Montana State University was the prospect of working on lasers and fusion, which he had been fascinated with since high school.
While working at the Lab on laser programs, Bayramian became a lead architect for the High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS), the world’s highest-average-power diode-pumped titanium-sapphire laser. HAPLS set a world record for diode-pumped petawatt lasers, and with completion of this milestone, the system has been crated and delivered to the Czech Republic for integration into the European Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines Facility.
As former intern Bayramian prepared to head overseas with the LLNL HAPLS team to help with the integration, he said, "I want to help the country, that’s the original reason I came here. And what’s great is that’s still the reason I’m at the Lab."
