Profiles

Isaac Salazar

Isaac Salazar, a new technical staff member in the Engineering Sciences and Applications Division's Weapon Response Group (ESA-WR),is an excellent example of just how effective the employment pipeline at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL, the Laboratory) can be when it reaches out early enough to a bright, young student.

Salazar is from Española, just a few miles from Los Alamos. He graduated from Española High School (EHS); obtained a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from New Mexico State University (NMSU); and earned a master of science degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University. He joined the Laboratory on June 16, 2003.

By the time he became a technical staff member, he already had a history of many student jobs at LANL, and it was his varied experience at the Laboratory,and especially, the Los Alamos Dynamics Summer School (LADSS), that convinced him to pursue a Laboratory job instead of choosing other career opportunities.

His father, Michael Salazar, is a technician at the Laboratory, and his mother, Rosalie Salazar, works in the Rio Arriba County Extension Office. In a recent interview, Isaac Salazar emphasized that both of his parents cared about his education and his future. They encouraged him every step of the way.

Salazar was a senior at EHS when he became a high school co-op student working at the Laboratory in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division (EES-5). He held the position during the 1995 school year and in the summer of 1996. His work involved scanning and digitizing well logs. He also did some website design.

In the summer of 1997, he returned to the Laboratory, working in the group now called ESA-WR. Chuck Farrar, creator of LADSS, was planning the program at that time, and Salazar heard about it and found it intriguing.

Among the projects Salazar worked on during that summer in ESA-WR was one at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), where he studied vibration characteristics of the linear accelerator. The project was intended to develop information that would help the Laboratory advise people building the spallation neutron source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Scott Doebling (of ESA-WR) and Salazar were the authors of a Los Alamos unrestricted-release document (an LA-UR) on this project.

Salazar's experience in 1997 had been under the auspices of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium at NMSU, and the consortium wanted him to have a variety of experiences.

As a result, he spent the summer of 1998 at NMSU's aero/fluid dynamics laboratory, working on the design for a flow-visualization device.

In the summer of 1999, he went to Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, under a "GEM fellowship",a fellowship awarded by the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science, Inc. He earned his bachelor's degree in December 2000, and he returned to Ford for the period from January through August 2001. During his time at Ford, he worked on three projects. In the Duratec Engine Systems Group, he helped schedule engine durability tests; in the Engine Performance Development Group, he did a study on how oil economy relates to cylinder-bore distortion; and in the Town Car Exhaust and Design Release Group, he coordinated prototype testing.

In August 2001, he started his graduate work at Texas A&M.

But it was the LADSS program at LANL in the summer of 2002 that probably decided his future.

"It was a really good experience," he said. It was so well organized, he added, that, "We were able to get our research going right away."

Salazar's mentor for LADSS was Matthew Bement of ESA-WR. Salazar was part of a team of three people that did research involving vibration control of a cantilevered beam. The members of the team tried to add an element of uncertainty and see how control systems reacted. They used piezoelectric patches as sensor and actuator and compared the robustness of three different control schemes.

Salazar was pleased that at the end of the program, students were able to get recognition of their work right away by doing a conference paper.

He returned to Texas A&M after his LADSS experience, went on with his studies, and was granted a master's degree in August 2003. He applied to LANL before he finished his master's degree, and he was ready to go to work when the Laboratory offered him a job.

So why, with a solid education and so much experience, did he choose the Laboratory instead of industry?

"One reason was location," Salazar said. Northern New Mexico was home,but another strong reason was a desire for variety. His work at Ford was fun, he said, but he thought that over time, there would be "a sameness" to it. At LANL, he felt, he "would be working on projects people had never worked on before."

At present, he is working on validation and verification projects at the Laboratory, "trying to make sure finite-element codes represent the real world as closely as possible." His work lies "in the middle, between analysis and experimentation," he said.

He is still waiting for his security clearance to arrive. Once it is in hand, he said, he will be able to work on other projects as well.

He is living at home and saving money, but in the long run, he hopes to buy a home in Española or Santa Fe.

"The Dynamic Summer School kind of sealed the deal about coming back here," he said.

Asked whether he would recommend the Laboratory's student programs to others, he said, "Yes, definitely. For sure, the Dynamic Summer School. It was the best."