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One of the biggest untapped clean energy sources on the planet — wave energy — could one day power millions of homes across the U.S. But more than a century after the first tests of the power of ocean waves, it is still one of the hardest energy sources to capture. Now, engineers at Sandia National Laboratories are conducting the largest model-scale wave energy testing of its kind to improve the performance of wave-energy converters (WECs).

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Thanks to advances in high-speed cameras, imaging techniques and computer modeling, Sandia National Laboratories researchers are studying fragmenting explosives in ways that weren’t possible before.

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Sandia researchers Joe Pratt and Lennie Klebanoff set out to answer one not-so-simple question: Is it feasible to build and operate a high-speed passenger ferry solely powered by hydrogen fuel cells? The answer is yes.

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Sandia National Laboratories sent a mock B61-12 nuclear weapon speeding down the labs’ 10,000-foot rocket sled track to slam nose-first into a steel and concrete wall in a spectacular test that mimicked a high-speed accident. It allowed engineers to examine safety features inside the weapon that prevent inadvertent nuclear detonation.

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Computation is stuck in a rut. The integrated circuits that powered the past 50 years of technological revolution are reaching their physical limits. This predicament has computer scientists scrambling for new ideas. Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories will present three papers at the IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing held Oct. 17-19, highlighting the breadth of potential non-traditional neural computing applications.

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The technical achievements of two Sandia National Laboratories innovators will be recognized with 2016 Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference (HENAAC) Awards from Great Minds in STEM, an organization supporting careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

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Craig Tenney, a chemical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, is looking for better ways to clean contaminated concrete to reduce the impact of a U.S. transportation hub being contaminated with a chemical agent.

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Abundant, chock full of energy and bound so tightly that the only way to release its energy is through combustion — lignin has frustrated scientists for years. With the help of an unusual soil bacteria, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories believe they now know how to crack open lignin, a breakthrough that could transform the economics of biofuel production.

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Charles Potter of Sandia National Laboratories, a certified health physicist since 1997, was honored recently at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Health Physics Society in Spokane, Washington. In November 2002, Potter became the only person to write an entire issue of the Health Physics Journal.

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A wide-ranging analysis of water vulnerability across the Pacific — including the U.S., China, Russia and Japan — has identified hundreds of locations where energy production depends upon scarce water supplies. The Sandia National Laboratories study, “Mapping Water Consumption for Energy Production Around the Pacific Rim,” was published in Environmental Research Letters.

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A simpler, more efficient way to power an electric car will result from a multitemperature membrane created at Sandia National Laboratories.

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An image-processing and analysis software developed at Sandia National Laboratories has swept the ranks of the country’s bomb squads. Called XTK, it has spread through the military and emergency response communities so rapidly that it’s now in the hands of more than 20,000 users across the globe.

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Sandia and UNM researchers developed a bio-inspired bubble-like membrane to capture CO2 from coal-fired power plants efficiently. The CO2 Memzyme could capture CO2 equivalent to planting 63 million trees and letting them grow for 10 years from just one power plant.

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A prototype cooling system for supercomputer data centers is expected to save hundreds of millions of gallons of water if widely adopted.

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Nearly 40 students ranging from local high school youths to international postdoctoral fellows gathered this summer at Sandia National Laboratories to study two steel bars bolted together. This deceptively simple system behaves in odd – nonlinear – ways, which has important implications for bridges, cars, even airplanes.

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Sandia National Laboratories, which has been in the business of nuclear detonation detection for more than 50 years, is working on the next generation system.

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Mike Kent, a researcher in Sandia National Laboratories’ Biological and Engineering Sciences Center, is studying a protein called Nef involved in HIV progression to AIDS with the ultimate goal of blocking it. He and his collaborators have developed a new hybrid method to study this HIV protein that compromises the immune system. The method also could work on many other proteins that damage cellular processes and cause diseases.

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Sandia National Laboratories and a commercial firm have designed a drilling tool that will withstand the heat of geothermal drilling.

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Marlene and George Bachand, Sandia National Laboratories bioengineers at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, developed a new method for encrypting and storing sensitive information in DNA. Digital data storage degrades and can become obsolete and old-school books and paper require lots of space.

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Two Sandia National Laboratories employees have been named recipients of 2016 Outstanding Service Awards from the New Mexico Office of African American Affairs (OAAA).

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Sandia National Laboratories simulates lightning in a lab to evaluate how anything from sensitive components to whole buildings hold up to the worst that nature can throw at them.

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Sandia National Laboratories researcher Armin Doerry has been named a SPIE fellow for his technical achievements in imaging microwave radar technology development, design and analysis.

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Rift Valley fever virus and other bunyaviruses may soon be added to the list of viruses denied access to a human host. Sandia National Laboratories researchers have discovered a mechanism by which RVFV hijacks the host machinery to cause infection

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Two young women, one disabled by a mortar blast in Afghanistan and the other injured in several battles while helping women in Baghdad, are the first two women veterans in Sandia National Laboratories’ Wounded Warrior Career Development Program (WWCDP).

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researcher Paul Vianco sees his work on thin films as a poster child for the way research and development work can boost U.S. industry.

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Cornea tissue is a promising biomaterial for Brad Boyce, a Sandia National Laboratories materials scientist. More than a decade after Boyce and his co-workers investigated the biomechanics of dissected cow corneas, their findings have been confirmed in healthy human eyes.

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Sandia will commemorate the 60th anniversary of its California site with a community event in downtown Livermore on Saturday, May 21 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Held at the Bankhead Theater, 2400 First Street, it will feature technology displays and demonstrations, national security speakers, hands-on science activities and recruiting.

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Sandia National Laboratories has produced a half-hour video about those who spent years working on Sandia's above-ground and underground field tests.

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The U.S. Marine Corps are the first boots on the ground in a crisis. On the front lines, they must be able to power up securely without plugging into utilities. They require nothing less than completely reliable and cost-effective energy independence.

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Sandia National Laboratories has created an Urban Resilience Analysis Process to help cities consider infrastructure improvements to make them more resilient. The framework includes key elements of Sandia’s critical infrastructure modeling and simulation tools, risk-consequence assessment and systems analysis expertise.

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A Sandia-led team has developed a way to make a magnetic material that could lead to lighter and smaller, cheaper and better-performing high-frequency transformers, needed for more flexible energy storage systems and widespread adoption of renewable energy.

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Robert Meagher, a chemical engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, has developed a simple technique for simultaneously detecting RNA from West Nile and chikungunya virus in samples from mosquitoes. He is now working to add the ability to screen for Zika virus.

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Sandia National Laboratories engineer Tian Ma, whose research helps deter nuclear proliferation, is the 2016 Most Promising Asian American Engineer of the Year (AAEOY). He will be honored in a ceremony on March 12 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

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Components housed in stainless steel for protection against extreme environments require paths for electricity to power them and communicate with them. Those paths in turn need a reliable insulation seal, so strong bonds between materials for airtight seals are crucial.

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Predicting the expected loss of ice sheet mass is difficult due to the complexity of modeling ice sheet behavior. To better understand this loss, a team of Sandia National Laboratories researchers has been improving the reliability and efficiency of computational models that describe ice sheet behavior and dynamics.

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In a twist of geometry, an oval can make a line. The new algae raceway testing facility at Sandia National Laboratories may be oval in shape, but it paves a direct path between laboratory research and solving the demand for clean energy.

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Sandia National Laboratories is developing nondestructive ways to detect damage below the surface in lightweight composite materials.

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A new design for gigantic blades longer than two football fields could help bring offshore 50-megawatt (MW) wind turbines to the United States and the world.

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A Sandia National Laboratories researcher uses a long-standing problem as a solution that he believes could lead to better and less expensive cell phones and other devices.

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Sandia National Laboratories is leading the Security and Resilience area of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC) and bringing its strong research capability in grid modernization to help the nation modernize its power grid.

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A unique filtering technology that combines light (photons) and sound (phonon) waves on a single chip is expected to detect radar and communications frequencies better than conventional electronics.

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Thor is expected to dramatically improve the design of similar machines aiming for high-yield fusion.

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Drivers are seeing more hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles on the road, but refueling stations for those vehicles are still few and far between. This is about to change. One reason is the Hydrogen Station Equipment Performance device, or HyStEP, which will greatly accelerate station commissioning.

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Benn Tannenbaum, manager of Sandia National Laboratories’ Washington, D.C., office, has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. He was nominated by its Forum on Physics and Society.

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National security analysts often find that available data is growing much faster than analysts’ ability to observe and process it. Sometimes they can’t make key connections and often they are overwhelmed struggling to use data for predictions and forensics. Sandia National Laboratories’ Pattern Analytics to Support High-Performance Exploitation and Reasoning (PANTHER) team has developed solutions that will enable analysts to work smarter, faster and more effectively when looking at huge, complex amounts of data in real-time, stressful environments where the consequences might be life or death.

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Sandia National Laboratories is performing a Life Extension Program on the W80-4 nuclear weapon. The Life Extension Program is refurbishing the W80 warhead with replacement components for aging technology and components that have limited lifespans. Much of the work is being done at Sandia's California site.

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Sandia National Laboratories will lead a new tri-lab consortium to address unsolved scientific challenges in the development of viable solid-state materials for storage of hydrogen onboard vehicles.

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Bringing closer a mass market for environmentally friendly hydrogen-powered cars, Sandia researchers are upgrading $0.37/gram molybdenum disulfide, "molly" for short, to take the place of $1,500/gram catalyst platinum. Unlike gasoline, hydrogen as fuel releases water, not carbon, into the air.

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Sandia National Laboratories is studying additive manufacturing and its potential for high-consequence applications. Two aspects of that effort are to understand both the properties of newly formed materials and how to design to get just what's needed without over-designing.

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A new chapter in clean energy is starting in Hawaii. At Young Brothers Ltd.’s Port of Honolulu facility, Sandia National Laboratories is leading the Maritime Hydrogen Fuel Cell project to test a hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered generator as an alternative to conventional diesel generators.