Feature Articles

Seasoned national laboratory scientist and leader Laura Berzak Hopkins joins PPPL as its new associate laboratory director for strategy and partnerships and deputy chief research officer. She previously served as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) associate program director for integrated weapon science, as well as Livermore’s deputy for assessment science to the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Experimental Sciences and Livermore’s funding manager for the weapon survivability program.

Scientists from Yale University and Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a systematic approach to understanding how energy is lost from the materials that make up qubits. Energy loss inhibits the performance of these quantum computer building blocks, so determining its sources — and adjusting the materials as necessary — can help bring researchers closer to designing quantum computers that could revolutionize several scientific fields. With their new approach, the Yale scientists were able to design a compact device that could store quantum information for more than one millisecond.

Twenty high school juniors and seniors recently spent two weeks at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory learning how scientists play key roles in developing cleaner, renewable energy sources.