Matthew Botos

Summer of the Thunderchicken:
The Sandia Co-op Experience, Part 2
Summer, 1999

What is Sandia?

Sandia National Laboratory is a Department of Energy facility run by a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. Their main focus is DOE research, with some defense work, and a variety of partnerships with industry. The facility consists of two sites: the Livermore, California one where I worked and a larger one in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Getting there is half the fun

After flying out to California for my last co-op rotation and spending the semester without a car, I decided that this summer I would definitely drive out. Not only could I get in a week's vacation while seeing the country, but I could do it all with Sandia picking up my travel bill. They reimburse mileage, meals, and hotels; and even after you take out money for gas an car maintenance there's enough leftover that you're almost getting paid for the time you're travelling.

I didn't really rush to get out there, but took my time and saw some family, friends, and sights along the way. My not-so-direct routes took me through a number of national parks, including The Badlands, Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone, and Rocky Mountain. Though it wasn't my original plan, I soloed the trip, which ended up being quite enjoyable.

Livermore

Our summer housing was arranged through Sandia, which had set four of us up in a two-bedroom apartment across town from the lab. I had thought this would be a little cramped, living with three of the other Cornell co-ops, but we all got along and didn't mind the break that it brought in the otherwise high housing prices. There were a number of other student apartments in the complex, due both to the efforts of Sandia to put us near each other and also because between Sandia and Lawrence Livermore Labs there were over 500 summer students in town.

Though this sheer number of students precluded taking any work-sponsored trips, it gave us a great pool of people to do stuff with on our own. Ultimate frisbee after work, trips into San Francisco to go to the X-Games and clubs, wine-tasting in Napa Valley, camping at Lake Tahoe, barhopping in Berkeley, and scuba diving in Monterey were some of the ways we found to entertain ourselves.

Work

I returned to find that my mentor had put the finishing touches on my work from the fall and rolled it into a paper with some of his own research. Later in the summer, the paper was accepted for publication with my name on it as one of the secondary authors - an unusual and very gratifying accomplishment for an undergrad. My new project was on a similar vein, again developing computer models for the behavior of metals. This time, it was for two materials needed to simulate the behavior of nuclear weapons.

While Sandia was at one time largely devoted to developing new weapons, it has now become their charge to maintain the safety of the country's current arsenal. With treaties banning actual nuclear testing, the focus has shifted to computer simulations of weapons tests. In addition to this task, Sandia has many partnerships with industry, using their resources to design better car engines, computer chips, and chemical sensors.

The work wasn't really related to any of my coursework; MAE 212 just scratches the surface of mechanics. My computer modeling was done on all Unix systems, so some knowledge of Unix and programming is helpful, though you can pick it up as you go along. I ended up writing a lot of code to automate some of my efforts, using a combination of C and Fortran.

The Atmosphere

One of the fringe benefits to working for the government at a national lab is getting to experience the atmosphere and security concerns in such an environment. This summer, we got a more streamlined security refresher which was a nice change from all the orientation we had the first time around. Still, there was a heavy emphasis on security, especially with recent incidents at other labs where nuclear secrets were sold to foreign powers. The height of all this was a two day "security immersion" during which all work stopped so that security concerns could be discussed. It was a unique experience, though not terribly popular.

Aside from that, the atmosphere is pretty laid back. Work hours are flexible; you can work a schedule that gives you half days every Friday or every other Friday off. There's no real dress code; jeans, shorts, sandals, and Hawaiian shirts (in my case) aren't uncommon. My department also had some barbecues on the weekends and luncheons whenever someone was leaving. The people here are all pretty nice and really appreciate having younger minds around.

Learning New Tricks

In addition to the day to day mental efforts of my job, there were other opportunities to keep learning throughout the summer. Because of the large number of students my departments hosts in the summer, they run a weekly seminar series on topics in mechanics. While they were aimed more at the graduate crowd, they did give us a chance to see some of the theory behind the models we use and also meet professors from a variety of schools. Outside of work, I took a scuba class taught by one of the lab groups, instructed by one of the guys in my department, and filled almost entirely with fellow summer students. The employee association has clubs for many activities, teaches classes, and offers discount tickets to aquariums and amusement parks.

Summary

After two sessions at Sandia, I would say it's been the most unique work experience I've had. The atmosphere, people, and projects are unlike what you'll find most places in industry. They do some very interesting and cutting edge work, place a heavy emphasis on security, and have a good group of people working for them. Even if this isn't the kind of thing you'd want to do as a regular job, I'd certainly say it makes for a rewarding co-op experience. If you'd like a more candid account of my experience or have any questions; I can be reached via email (wherever I am) at matthew@botos.com.