Dr. Joel Lash
Director, Engineering Sciences Center
Seminar Information
EBU2, Room 479
IN PERSON ONLY
Sandia’s core missions frequently require the development of complex, high-reliability engineered systems that operate in challenging environments and incorporate cutting-edge technology. Realizing these systems critically depends on engineering capabilities grounded in fundamental scientific understanding. Sandia’s Engineering Sciences Center is responsible for developing and stewarding many of these capabilities including thermal, fluid, aero, structural dynamics, solid mechanics and shock physics. A current focus is developing predictive computational simulation capabilities of coupled phenomena (e.g. thermal/mechanical, aero/structural) that are informed by and validated by highly diagnosed experiments and high-fidelity tests. This talk will provide examples of how these capabilities are developed starting from discovery efforts that ultimately tie to large-scale, high-hazard, full system testing.
Dr. Lash joined Sandia’s Pulsed Power Sciences Center in May 1996 to develop and field advanced plasma diagnostics for the Ion Beam Fusion Program and for Sandia’s development of high-intensity radiographic x-ray sources. In 2000, Dr. Lash joined the Engineering Sciences Center and led both component and system level computational mechanics analysis. In 2013, Dr. Lash became Senior Manager of the Z Facility Research and Development Group responsible for operation and engineering of the Z Machine, the world’s most powerful pulsed power facility. He was also responsible for Z diagnostic research, development and fielding. Since 2017, Dr. Lash has been leading the Engineering Sciences Center which stewards a breadth of disciplines for Sandia including Thermal, Fluid, Aero, and Fire Sciences as well as Structural Dynamics, Shock Physics, and Solid Mechanics. Work in the center spans the Research to Development to Application spectrum, with fundamental discovery and advanced diagnostics applied to highly integrated full scale physical and computational simulation of engineered systems subjected to extreme environments. Dr. Lash earned his B.S. in Mathematics with emphasis in Physics and Computer Science from Indiana University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Nuclear Science from the University of Michigan. As a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, he developed optical plasma diagnostics for studying the interaction of high intensity lasers and electron beams with metals and ceramics.