Inaugural Two-day Forum: Research at LANL; Opportunities for UCI Faculty & Students

UCI-National Labs Connections

A seminar series connecting UCI faculty and students to research and opportunities at the National Labs

Bio: John Sarrao serves as deputy director for science, technology and engineering at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he oversees a $1.9 billion organization with 3,800 employees. He manages the laboratory’s extensive science, technology and engineering capabilities in support of its national security mission. Before becoming deputy director, Sarrao was the principal associate director for science, technology and engineering and prior to that, he served as associate director for theory, simulation and computation. He has also held a number of leadership positions within the lab’s materials community. Sarrao’s primary research interest is in the synthesis and characterization of correlated electron systems, especially actinide materials. He was the 2013 winner of the Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Award and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sarrao’s personal research and technical leadership career has emphasized national security science from plutonium physics research to advanced materials design and discovery to stewarding LANL’s high performance computing resources and simulation capabilities. Sarrao received a doctorate in physics from UCLA based on thesis work performed at LANL. He also has a master’s degree in physics from UCLA and a bachelor’s degree in physics from Stanford University.