| Robert
E. Reinovsky is Program Manager for Primary Assessment Technology
at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he is responsible for scientific
and programmatic planning, organization and execution of research
programs addressing the physics issues and simulation methodologies
for one aspect of the nuclear weapons program. Major technical issues
include high explosive science; material behavior and properties
under extreme conditions; hydrodynamics including implosion hydrodynamics
and instabilities; nuclear processes; and high energy density plasma
and radiation processes.
Previously he focused on applications of pulsed power to problems
in hydrodynamics and material properties. At the same time Bob harbors
a career long, and not always well disguised, fascination with the
physics and engineering of pulsed power systems that offer such
enormous potential for manipulating and investigating the physical
world in states ranging from condensed matter to plasmas.
Bob received his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering in 1971
and his Ph.D. in 1973, both, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
in the Electrophysics Department where his dissertation work focused
on ion beam diagnostics for magnetically confined fusion plasmas.
From 1974–1986, Bob worked at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory
(now the AF Research Laboratory) in the areas of plasma and pulsed
power physics. At the AFWL, his principal interests were high-density
plasma z-pinch implosions, radiation processes, plasma diagnostics,
and pulsed power physics. Bob was programmatically responsible for
developing and building four generations of the world-class SHIVA
family of high-current, low-impedance pulsed power systems, and
for developing and demonstrating world-record, fuse-opening switches
using these systems.
Techniques in ultra-high-current high-explosive pulsed power developed
in Los Alamos, starting in the 1950’s, caught his imagination
because they offer access to even more exciting conditions of high
energy density. Bob joined Shock Wave Physics Group (M-6) at Los
Alamos in 1986 to continue applying these techniques to problems
in national defense, plasmas and condensed matter; and to explore
the engineering of compact pulsed power systems. Bob led the Shock
Wave Physics Group at Los Alamos from 1990 to 1993 and then joined
the Los Alamos High Energy Density Physics Program as Project Leader
for the Athena Pulsed Power Project and then as Chief Scientist
and Deputy Program Manager. From 1998 to 2006 he was the Program
Manager for the Pulsed Power Hydrodynamics Program which sponsors
the development and construction of the Atlas system and of the
Atlas program of liner driven hydrodynamics experiments.
The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union
in 1991 raised significant issues about the stability of the Russian
nuclear weapons laboratories and about the future of the world-class
scientific staff of those institutions. Bob joined with a few Los
Alamos colleagues to establish an active program of unclassified,
basic, joint scientific work with these scientists. These efforts,
starting in 1992, and continuing to the present, have grown into
a vigorous DOE program of joint activities in the areas of pulsed
power, material dynamics, and computational mathematics for the
mutual benefit of both nations.
Bob is a Fellow of the IEEE, has been elected an Academician in
the International Academy of Informatization, and has been awarded
the Sakharov Medal by the All Russian Scientific Research Institute
of Experimental Physics and the IEEE NPSS Peter Haas Award. He begins
a term as Vice President of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences
Society in Jan 2009.
Bob Reinovsky, IEEE NPSS Vice President, President-elect, can
be reached at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, PPH Program Office
MS D420, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87544; Phone:
+1 505-667-8214; Fax: 505-665-2828: E-mail:bobr@lanl.gov.
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