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Richard “Dick” Lee Lee fills the Matter in Extreme Conditions gap at SLAC

When Richard “Dick” Lee arrived at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory last month to assume his duties heading up the Science, Research and Development Division of the Linac Coherent Light Source, he felt right at home.

Lee, who moved to SLAC from Lawrence Livermore National Lab, jokes that he has spent more time at SLAC over the last few years than he has at Lawrence Livermore. It all dates back to a 1999 talk he gave at SLAC in which he pointed out that a free-electron X-ray laser “would be a really swift thing” for studying warm dense matter, he says.

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More than 1,400 physicists received their Ph.D.s for research with the Tevatron, which was shut down on Sept. 30 after 28 years of operation.Fermilab says good-bye to Tevatron, focuses on the future

More than ten thousand people from across the globe watched online to see the Tevatron particle accelerator at DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory power down one final time. At the event on Sept. 30, thousands of collaborating scientists and employees celebrated nearly three decades of scientific and technological achievements that have changed the way we understand the world.

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See also…

DOE Pulse
  • Number 348  |
  • October 17, 2011

  • Scientists detect unusual ‘quasiparticles’ in tri-layer graphene

    Liyuan Zhang and Igor Zaliznyak at Brookhaven Lab’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials By studying three layers of graphene — sheets of honeycomb-arrayed carbon atoms — stacked in a particular way, scientists at Brookhaven Lab have discovered a “little universe” populated by a new kind of “quasiparticles” — particle-like excitations of electric charge. Unlike massless photon-like quasiparticles in single-layer graphene, these new quasiparticles have mass, which depends on their energy (or velocity). In theory, these unique quasiparticles become infinitely massive at rest!

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  • Helping industrialize biomass

    biomass feedstock

    Many envision a day when raw materials such as wood chips and corn stalks are transformed into a high-quality commodity traded on the open market beside grain, coal and crude oil.

    Scientists already know how to convert grass, stalks and straw into biofuels, but numerous challenges remain to develop biomass into an industrial-scale commodity that can significantly contribute to the nation’s fuel needs. That’s why the DOE's Idaho National Laboratory recently hosted a workshop with government, university and industry partners to forge a path forward.

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  • LANL develops first genetically engineered "magnetic" algae

    The photos show wild type algae and magnetic algae placed in a test tube next to a permanent magnet. The wild type (left) settles to the bottom of the tube under the influence of gravity. The genetically transformed algae (right) stick to the wall due to magnetic attractions. Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have genetically engineered "magnetic" algae to investigate alternative, more efficient harvesting and lipid extraction methods for biofuels. The researchers seek to reduce the cost of algae-based biofuel production.

    Currently, used algae-harvesting and lipid-extraction technology accounts for almost 30 percent of the total cost of algae-based biofuel production. By inducing paramagnetic properties in algae, a permanent magnet-based separation could provide a low-cost alternative to current technologies.

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  • Healthy integration leads to a “sickening” discovery

    Combining biological measurements and computational analysis helped scientists discover new proteins involved in food poisoning. By combining high-throughput measurements of multiple biological molecules and computational tools, scientists at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Oregon Health & Science University found many new proteins that appear to be involved in Salmonella virulence, the culprit in several high-profile food recalls. Several proteins were selected and demonstrated to be involved in virulence, the critical part of the microbe’s sophisticated offensive and defensive strategies. Virulence proteins are part of what makes food poisoning debilitating and difficult to combat.

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