“For me it’s about seeing everyone’s perspective on how the labs work, their missions, how they work together, because they’re coming from all different backgrounds." — ORNL computational nuclear scientist Tara Pandya
For ORNL’s Tara Pandya, a computational nuclear scientist, 2020 will be a crash course in learning how to lead within a national laboratory.
Pandya joined the 2020 cohort of DOE’s prestigious Oppenheimer Science and Energy Leadership Program at the start of the year, becoming the second ORNL staff member accepted since the program launched in 2017.
She follows Eric Pierce, a group leader in the Environmental Sciences Division, who was a member of the 2019 cohort.
“It’s a really big honor,” Pandya said. “It’s very rare that someone gets the opportunity to do what we get to do.”
The yearlong program was developed to introduce the next generation of leaders to the breadth and depth of the national laboratory system. This year’s cohort, whose 18 members bring diverse backgrounds from within all 17 national laboratories, will tour the country’s national labs and write “think pieces” based on their experiences that address specific improvement areas for the DOE lab system.
“For me it’s about seeing everyone’s perspective on how the labs work, their missions, how they work together, because they’re coming from all different backgrounds,” Pandya said.
For Pierce, the experience provided unparalleled working-level and big-picture views of how the system works, including challenges labs face daily. And he already had a unique background, having spent a year with DOE in Washington, D.C., during a federal administration change.
“Even having all that insight after a year in D.C., the year of traveling around the complex and seeing the different labs and the different missions through the Oppenheimer program still offered a unique perspective that I don’t think you can get any other way,” he said. “The breadth and depth of the science at each institution is amazing, and that is probably an understatement.”
The highlights are too numerous to list, but among the “coolest” things Pierce saw during the program was the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where 192 lasers focus on a point the size of a pencil eraser to imitate conditions found in stars, planets and nuclear weapons. Hearing from national leaders including former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz was also memorable, he said.
The program had a lasting impact for Pierce. It taught him how to navigate systems within and outside the lab and support staff members in his group, and it gave him insight into interlab teaming opportunities and a renewed appreciation of the entire system.
“Overall if I was to sum it up, you hear people say all the time that ‘the national labs are a crown jewel,’” he said. “It often sounds like it’s just kind of a cliché, but having been at two, having been able to go to at least 14 … they really are the crown jewel.
“The things they do for the country and the way the complex has the ability to focus resources on a really, really difficult problem is quite unique—so unique that every other country is trying to recreate it.”—Abby Bower