May 20, 2024 - Laboratory for Laser Energetics

The 15^th Omega Laser Facility Users Group (OLUG) Workshop, held on April 16–18, 2024 at the Bloch Alumni Advancement Center and Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), attracted over 170 participants, including 64 students and 44 postdoc and early-career researchers, from 39 institutions. The annual workshop facilitates a continuing dialog among individual users and between users and the facility management. It also provides opportunities for students and young researchers to present their work in an interactive yet informal setting to foster collaboration and networking.

A broad range of user-focused topics was covered over the course of three days: high-energy-density (HED) science talks by Omega users including four by PhD students, a joint poster session, three Findings and Recommendations sessions (F&Rs), target discussions, an evening tutorial on facility requirements and best practices for users when designing and preparing their experiments, a young researchers forum, workforce developments, a community DEIA discussion, career and training opportunities in HED science, LLE Director’s remarks, perspectives from federal funding agencies and programs, Omega facility and user program updates, a talk on the NSF OPAL design project, and a tour of the facility.

The OLUG community submitted 28 F&Rs to facility management and of the 67 total poster presentations during the workshop, 56 were given by students and postdocs. Ten Best Posters were awarded to undergraduate students Noah Harley and Chunsun Lei (Houghton University); Kevin Cerda, Dylan Christopherson, and Shoshanna Hertz (SUNY Geneseo); and Ann Truong (UCSD); graduate students Justin Kunimune (MIT), Kasper Moczulski (University of Rochester), Tristan Bachmann (University of Rochester), and Matthew Cufari (MIT); and postdoctoral researchers Heath LeFevre (University of Michigan), Michael Wadas (University of Michigan), and Victor Tranchant (University of Rochester).

This OLUG workshop is made possible in part by support from the National Nuclear Security Administration for travel expenses of students and postdocs, and by the generous sponsorships from Luxel Corporation, Prism Computational Sciences, Inc., and Sydor Technologies.

Earlier this spring, the Omega Laser Facility Users Group (OLUG) Pride Networking Night created a space for our LGBTQ+ community to connect with members and allies at other institutions. Hosted by LLE Pride, APS-DPP Pride, and LLE DEIC, this was a great opportunity, particularly for early-career professionals and PhD students, to connect, ask questions, and share experiences to help navigate their respective spaces. Specifically, attendees from MIT and LLE discussed building a stronger collaboration by sharing resources, such as connections with guest speakers, and holding more reoccurring meetings to discuss the climate at their home institutions. Discussions also touched on the crucial importance of having mentors and colleagues who are willing and open to learning, to making an effort to identify issues, and to communicating on ways to best support each other’s needs. Non-LLE attendees expressed being pleasantly surprised by and grateful for the large turnout of LLE Pride attendees and their allies—including LLE Director Chris Deeney, whose on-the-house round of drinks elicited a cheer by all!

Fifteenth Omega Laser Facility Users Group Workshop

LLE’s Third Annual LGBTQ+ OLUG Networking Night