Published: Aug. 9, 2022 By

Sandia National Laboratories  logo

The Research Support Office will host Sandia Day 2022 – with research presentations, poster session and networking event – from 2:15-5 p.m. Aug. 29 on the first floor of the Gallogly Discovery Learning Center to celebrate the growing partnerships between engineering and Sandia National Laboratory.

The event will start with rapid presentations from CU Boulder researchers working with Sandia from about 2:30-4 p.m. and then transition to a poster session, networking and refreshments for the final hour. The event is open to students, faculty and staff across campus and will include engineering-based research as well as projects from the College of Arts and Sciences and several institutes, said Acting Associate Dean for Research Shideh Dashti.

“This event is an excellent opportunity for our community to come together and celebrate the fantastic joint research projects between our institutions being done here every day,” said Dashti. “The work highlighted during the rapid presentations is highly interdisciplinary and has many important applications that would be of interest to a broad audience.”

The Sandia Day activities primarily aim to celebrate the partnerships between CU Engineering and the nearby laboratory. Headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission lab managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

In spring 2022, then Associate Dean for Research Massimo Ruzzene announced a new university-government research partnership that included a commitment by the college of $250,000 of internal funds to support collaboration with lab researchers.

That money was matched by the national lab to fund five new faculty-led projects selected based on a set of specific research topics and priorities. Faculty leads for the partnership came from the departments of civil, environmental and architectural engineering; mechanical; aerospace; and electrical, computer and energy engineering.

Together, those projects represent research into key topics such as materials and cybersecurity and will be heavily featured during the initial blitz portion of the event, said Ruzzene, who is now acting vice chancellor of research on campus. Ruzzene also noted that the partnership has nearly doubled the college’s overall shared research portfolio with Sandia, while simultaneously supporting broader STEM workforce development among graduate students.

In addition to the main evening event, Sandia National Laboratories will also host a dedicated career information table from noon to 2 p.m. Aug. 29 in the Engineering Center lobby. That opportunity is open to all students, and details are available on Handshake.   

Registration for the Sandia Day presentations and poster session event is not required, and guests are encouraged to drop in and out as needed during this busy time in the semester. For more information contact the Research Support Office.

Sandia career information on Handshake