Here is an interesting ranking system for government and private institutions.
Very versatile.
https://www.scimagoir.com/rankings.php?sector=Government&country=USA&area=2100
Here is an interesting ranking system for government and private institutions.
Very versatile.
https://www.scimagoir.com/rankings.php?sector=Government&country=USA&area=2100
17 comments:
Around 1999, 2000 LANL was considered by the DOE to be the top national laboratory and was even called the crown jewel of the DOE complex. It was certainly true that if you looked at publications and postdoc placement that LANL was very highly ranked as a top scientific institution close to the top 5 in the nation. Now it is way lower than many other labs. A few years ago a report was shown on this blog highlighting how LANL was way ahead LBNL, ORNL, ANL, and LLNL, now it is behind all of these.
There is some surprises as well such as PNNL being ahead of LANL but in just this past four years I know of number of top people who have left LANL to PNNL. Also it is clear that ORNL is now starting to be a contender for one of the top places, my guess is that in 5-10 years ORNL will be the crown jewel or at least it will share it with LBNL. In 10 years LANL will probably fall further.
I am not sure what can be done or if anything should be done. If LANL is to focus on pit production than it is natural that it will shift out of the national laboratory spotlight. It is still remarkable just how much LANL has changed in 20 years. ANL and ORNL have not really changed but have gotten bigger, or do more but the core character is still the same. LANL on other hand has changed culturally, intellectually, and in mindset.
Probably the one that is most noticeable is the excitement and passion people had 20 years ago. Now it is just a job. At ORNL people definitely see what they are doing as a higher calling, adding understating to the world, severing the nation, being on the cutting edge of science and tech. LANL, it is just a job, try to into management to make more money, go hiking, being hated by half of New Mexico, accused of polluting, stealing, being cowboys, and having poor security. What will happen who knows but the pit production could really change the culture even further. The question is can they get culture that can make the number of pits promised?
As for LLNL, it had a dip but appears to be coming back, I think the future is brighter for them, but they did have same hard times when the place went for profit. If LANL goes more on the pit side than perhaps there is room grow work that was formally done at LANL and bring it to LLNL.
I hear mixed things about Sandia, but certainly in terms of engineering and tech they are growing.
Having grown up in Los Alamos, I can tell you based upon direct, daily, first-hand experience that the Lab of 2022 is a joke compared to the Lab of 1972. Where we were once unequivocally the world’s best at almost every single thing we touched from supercomputers to accelerators to nuclear weapons and non-proliferation, today we aren’t even “among the best” at any of those things. We cannot build a single pit, the Chinese routinely trounce us in the supercomputer game, our leadership in non-proliferation is more interested in woke projects than protecting the world, and we couldn’t build an accelerator if our lives depended upon it. We haven’t had real leaders since the 1990s and the ones presently in those positions are far more interested in lining their pockets than in national security.
The failed strategy and undermining of the Labs by the US government has been effective in destroying our scientific prowess. Anyone who has worked at the Labs in the last 40 years has seen their acute decline.
Just for perspective, both LLNL and LANL rank below the Department of Agriculture.
9:19 We used to joke at that aspect whenever we visited Washington. The mighty Forrestal building is dwarfed by the dept of cows across the street.
"we touched from supercomputers to accelerators to nuclear weapons and non-proliferation, today we aren’t even “among the best” at any of those things"
The list is much larger, LANL had the worlds leading work in materials, nonlinear science, theoretical physics, extreme conditions science, high energy physics, astrophysics, los of top tech advancements like detectors, genomics, as well as computing and even had one the worlds best quantum computing groups as late of as the early 90s. We would have people go to faculty positions at Stanford, MIT, UCB, Cornell and so on. Now LANL is far behind in most of these areas. There are still some pockets of excellence but these are either ignored by the lab and are functioning on their own with outside money from Office of Science, NIH or DARPA, or they are actively attacked. They sure like to take credit for the high level publications that come out from this but when it comes to trying help out some of this work they are nowhere to be seen. 25 years ago I remember how proud everyone was to have top science at LANL and considered LANL a science lab, now during lunch with many people they will openly deride high profile science at the lab and say that we do national security not "sandbox science" or why do we have junk like quantum dots, HIV data bases or a stupid Magnet lab. What is even odder is these same people have no understanding of the history of the lab, how science was always huge part of the lab, how it plays a role foundation of the lab and image of the lab.
Most of the younger staff I talk to seem not care about the decline of LANL and as they say are very happy to be out of the hyper aggressive science/engineering world you find in academics or top industry places like Intel or Google.
My sense is that things are not as bad LLNL. The excellence may be more focused but it has more institutional support. The most obvious is NIF but there are many others.
With all due respect LLNL employees are not really scientists. I would say they are members of the weapons or intelligence community with a scientific background. They cannot interact too much with members of the international scientific community, their research is limited to "weapons-science", they do not publish as often as university scientists, and their facilities and codes are restricted or classified. They are not part of the open international scientific community. I don't think many would be able to get tenure at a university. Those in the weapons division have no scientific output. They mainly spend their time recalculating.
Most of the physicists at LANL and LLNL are scientists, it is just that they are industrial scientists, not research scientists. Industrial scientists are basically highly trained technicians. No real discovery or research with them on the level seen with research scientists. Engineers are definitely technicians and they discover nothing as they don't do research. I know the engineers tell us endlessly they do research but they don't and they just don't know it. This is why the academic physics community (the research scientists) really do not recognize the scientists at these labs as contributors in the field. Nobody at MIT or Princeton is saying "we should check with LANL or LLNL on this and get their opinion". The one thing that might have demonstrated some research abilities at LLNL, NIF, well didn't do too much to change the above view. There are a few actual research scientists at these labs but they are very few and many are not doing physics research anyway. Industrial scientists have a valuable role to play, it is just a different role from the research scientists.
2/06/2022 2:31 PM
What a crock. You know nothing about the science being done at LANL or LLNL, or you are just a troll.
pure sciences moving further and further away from their origins. The intensive pursuit of these sciences does not do much harm, or much good, to either the rich or the poor. The main social benefit provided by pure science in esoteric fields is to serve as a welfare program for scientists and engineers
You know nothing about the science being done at LANL or LLNL, or you are just a troll.
2/07/2022 6:23 PM
Can you give me an example of "science " at LANL that is being done that is not under attack or looked down upon by LANL? If you know please tell us. DOE and even LANL has said "quantum science" is important but if you have read this or the former LANL blog you will see how hostile many at the labs have been to quantum sciences. This is on top of many lunch conversations where there are endless complaints about having this pie in the sky junk, along with CINT, NHMFL, astrophysics, and open science at the labs. Do you deny that many at LANL and LLNL and openly hostile to having research style science at the labs? This is not everyone 20 years most people at LANL and LLNL where very happy to have research science at the labs and thought it was important to the mission. Now how many people feel that way? Give me an honest reply not some vague "you know nothing", be truthful.
I agree with 2/06/2022 2:31 PM that the labs are mainly industrial science or engineering and have decreasing role in research science. Perhaps it is better that way and that for the current mission is that we no longer need breakthrough or cutting edge science and having this at the labs will not add to the current mission. I hear many conversations about why we have a postdoc program at LLNL or LANL, when such positions do not really prepare postdocs for the actual permeant jobs they could potentially get at the labs.
I agree that science is still being done at LANL and LLNL but for how much longer?
"Perhaps it is better that way and that for the current mission is that we no longer need breakthrough or cutting edge science and having this at the labs will not add to the current mission."
The "current mission" at the for-profit labs is to maximize their annual award fee profits every year. It's not about employee talent or value, it's about schmoozing the Local Field Office, and moving the milestone goal posts as needed. This is why lab employees in the for-profit management era have been down graded to commodities.
I played around with the site and they have input that makes it easy to compare any two labs or even multiple labs. I put in the #1 NREL and compared to #17 LANL. What is so stunning was how much LANL fell in comparison in 2009 LANL beat NREL in all the categories but by 2021 it was way behind. I did the the same for ORNL, ANL and several others. It beyond stunning. According to this site LANL would have been #1 or #2 in 2009 and is now #17 2021. I think anyone in LANL at 2009 or before would agree but seeing it printed out so clearly is still very shocking at least for me.
https://www.scimagoir.com/compare.php?idps[]=24712&idps[]=24968&idps[]=24193&idps[]=24270&idps[]=24897&idps[]=24696
https://www.scimagoir.com/compare.php?idps[]=24897&idps[]=24712
8:13 what is even more stunning is that the real collapse at LANL happened a decade before that. We have zero leadership in 2022, our performance appraisals are nothing but popularity contests, independent thought is immediately crushed by overpaid know-nothings, we have endless meaningless slogans like, “100% effective”, and the people directly responsible for this free fall are the ones rewarded.
/09/2022 7:43 AM
But we do have beautiful, animated web pages, thanks to the hordes of high-school graduate browser programmers. Instructions to "... and play the app ..." are a clue to the depth of thought.
"But we do have beautiful, animated web pages, thanks to the hordes of high-school graduate browser programmers. Instructions to "... and play the app ..." are a clue to the depth of thought."
The labs have more and more of people like this at all levels. Zero intellectual curiosity. All these people want is a nice cubicle somewhere where they do mundane repetitive work with heavy supervision have Thursday as work at home and Friday a day off.
LANL used to have a first class research library. It is now a Starbucks. That says it all.
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