(AGENPARL) – Fri 09 May 2025 A weekly compendium of media reports on science and technology achievements
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Though the Laboratory reviews
items for overall accuracy, the reporting organizations are responsible for
the content in the links below.
LLNL Report, May 9, 2025
John S. “Johnny” Foster Jr. served as LLNL director from 1961-1965,
overseeing the growth of the Lab into a premier national security laboratory.
Celebrating the life of Johnny Foster
https://www.exchangemonitor.com/john-foster-lawrence-livermores-fourth-director-has-died-at-102/
Former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Director John Foster
died on April 25 at the age of 102.
Foster served as Lawrence Livermore’s fourth director from 1961-65, before
becoming director of Defense Research and Engineering at the Department of
Defense from 1965-1973, under four defense secretaries and two presidents.
However, his career began in World War II, when in 1942 he did research at
Harvard’s Radio Research Laboratory. He was advising the U.S. Army Air Corp
in Italy and reverse-engineering German radar to mitigate bomber casualties
by the age of 21.
Foster completed his bachelor’s degree at McGill University with honors in
1948. He married Barbara Anne Boyd Wickes there, who joined him on a
cross-continent motorcycle journey in 1952 from Montreal to Berkeley, Calif.,
when Ernest Lawrence, founder of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
recruited Foster to join Lawrence’s University of California Radiation
Laboratory.
Read More
https://www.exchangemonitor.com/john-foster-lawrence-livermores-fourth-director-has-died-at-102/
An illustration of quantum dots as they are deposited on a textured surface.
(Image: Brendan Daniel Thompson)
Quantum dots meet textured detectors
https://optics.org/news/16/5/7
Near-infrared photodetectors are used in biomedical sensing and defense and
security technologies. For enhanced performance and integrated, compact
imaging systems, the photodetectors must be able to detect multiple
wavelengths of light at once on a single chip.
Quantum dots — which are tiny crystals of semiconducting material — offer
a path forward in this field because different-size dots can be engineered to
absorb different wavelengths. However, depositing films of quantum dots is
difficult on the textured, corrugated surfaces typically used in the infrared
regime.
In a study published in Nanoscale, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL), California, have presented a new method to deposit
quantum-dot films on corrugated surfaces. The technique eliminates the need
for post-processing and advances the scalability and performance of quantum
dot-based photodetectors, says the group.
Read More https://optics.org/news/16/5/7
At the symposium, LLNL Director Kim Budil emphasized the importance of being
optimistic as a leader. 
Leading with a sense of purpose
https://www.independentnews.com/news/livermore_news/women-in-business-gather-for-second-annual-symposium/article_97d23f47-85d7-405d-9f04-b17fee310adb.html
A powerhouse group of women in business met for a second consecutive year
last week at the Bankhead Theater for a Women in Business Symposium.
The main panelists were City of Dublin Deputy City Manager Hazel L.
Wetherford, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Director Kim Budil,
CityServe of the Tri-Valley CEO Christine Beitsch-Bahmani and Pamela Galley,
Kaiser Permanente’s senior vice president/area manager for the Diablo
Service Area.
Budil offered a fitting conclusion.
“Some combination of sense of purpose, of what you care about, what really
gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you energized about your career
is really important,” she said. “But the ability to be open to new ideas,
new experiences, new opportunities, things that you wouldn’t have planned
for yourself is just, I think, by far the most interesting part of a
career..”
Read More
https://www.independentnews.com/news/livermore_news/women-in-business-gather-for-second-annual-symposium/article_97d23f47-85d7-405d-9f04-b17fee310adb.html
The inside of a NIF preamplifier support structure. (Photo: Damien Jemison)
NIKE and NIF support stockpile stewardship
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has announced a new strategic
direction for its NIKE laser-target facility to align its world-class
capabilities with the Department of Defense’s (DoD) nuclear strategic
priorities.
For decades, the NIKE facility and its scientific team have contributed to
the National Nuclear Security Administration’s flagship laser program at
the National Ignition Facility (NIF), which recently achieved its landmark
goal of ignition where the fusion of hydrogen nuclei produces more energy
than the laser energy used to drive the reaction.
Through the creative work of its research team, and a strategic partnership
with the Air Force, NIKE’s capabilities are now being harnessed to address
the central science and technology needs of the DoD nuclear deterrence
mission.
Read More
Illustration of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft,
the first-ever asteroid-deflection test, completed in 2022. (Image:
NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
Cataloguing and combating near-Earth objects

The Bay Area researchers charged with defending the planet against asteroids

In December, astronomers identified that the asteroid YR4 had a small but not
insignificant chance of striking Earth in 2032, a scenario that experts
postulated could have more explosive potential than 500 Hiroshima nuclear
bombs.
Researchers reclassified YR4 as a non-threat in February, but the interim
period when the asteroid was considered a threat was the first time that the
International Asteroid Warning Network had been activated to respond to a
threat since its formation in 2014.
The global apparatus of researchers and cosmologists had formed in 2013 in
the wake of an exploding meteor over Chelyabinsk, Russia, that shattered
glass for miles around.
“We did not see that one coming,” said Katie Kumamoto, a researcher at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor.
“There was no warning until there was actually a fireball in the sky being
caught on all of those dashboard cameras on people’s cars. I think that was
a big wake-up call.”
Read More

The Bay Area researchers charged with defending the planet against asteroids

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Administration.
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