Chris Keane, of the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate and a former senior manager for the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) fusion energy program, received the Board of Directors Special Award from Fusion Power Associates. Keane, who led the inertial-confinement fusion program at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for many years, was honored “in recognition of and appreciation for managerial contributions to the inertial confinement fusion technical program achievements that occurred during and beyond” his tenure at NNSA and DOE.

Joseph Nilsen, a physicist in the Weapons and Complex Integration Principal Directorate, has been elected a fellow of the Optical Society, the seventh society fellow currently at the Laboratory. The organization recognized Nilsen for his “pioneering contributions to the development and understanding of X-ray lasers and their applications.” Nilsen, who is also a fellow of the American Physical Society, helped develop the prepulse techniques that are now standard worldwide for driving x-ray lasers.

Livermore electronics engineer Faranak Nekoogar won the Best Poster Award in the Advancements in Containment and Surveillance Session at an International Atomic Energy Agency symposium in Vienna. Her presentation, “Advanced Radio Frequency Tags for Safeguards Applications,” describes technology that uses radio frequency to detect, remotely monitor, and track cylinders with nuclear materials. The system, which Nekoogar helped develop, substantially improves monitoring capabilities at various stages of the enrichment process.

The American Physical Society has selected four Livermore scientists as 2010 fellows:

Jon Eggert, a physicist in the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, was cited in the Shock Compression of Condensed Matter category for significant achievements in linking dynamic and static compression of condensed matter.

In the Plasma Physics category, Hye-Sook Park, a physicist in the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science Principal Directorate, was cited for development of seminal experimental techniques to create and probe plasmas with extreme density and temperature.

Ramona Vogt, a staff scientist in the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, was cited in the Nuclear Physics category for her contribution to the science community’s understanding of the dynamics of heavy quark and charmonium production in collisions with nuclei and for providing guidance for using these probes in experimental investigations of hard dynamics in collisions with nuclei.

Olgica Bakajin, formerly a chief scientist at Livermore and now chief technology officer of Porifera, Inc., was cited in the Biological Physics category for her contributions to the development of new instrumentation for studies of protein folding and for fundamental understanding of transport and selectivity at the nanoscale.