Argonne National Laboratory

Awards and Recognition | Physical Sciences and Engineering

July 2021 PSE Employees of the Month

By
Savannah Mitchem
|
Whitney Armstrong, Robin Harris, Sylvester Joosten, Russell Knaack and John Rohrer are recognized as PSE Employees of the Month

The Physical Sciences and Engineering (PSE) Employees of the Month program recognizes individuals from two categories each month — programmatic and operations — based on the excellence of their work and demonstration of Argonne’s Core Values: Impact, Safety, Respect, Integrity and Teamwork.

July 2021 PSE Employee of the Month — Operations category

  • Robin Harris, executive assistant for Argonne’s Physics (PHY) division, went above and beyond to train a replacement for her former administrative assistant role in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering (CSE) division. She worked late nights and weekends to ensure a smooth transition in support of the CSE team. Her efforts demonstrate Argonne’s Core Values of Impact, Respect and Integrity.

  • Russell Knaack and John Rohrer, engineers in PHY, demonstrated excellent teamwork and safety practices while repurposing an experimental area for the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS). This year-long project supported the new N=126 factory, a major new ATLAS initiative. The team navigated numerous obstacles to complete the installation during a short window of ATLAS maintenance time.

July 2021 PSE Employees of the Month — Programmatic category

  • Whitney Armstrong and Sylvester Joosten, assistant physicists in PHY, have shown exceptional leadership by developing and supporting a cutting-edge software toolkit for the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) ATHENA collaboration. They also hosted tutorial sessions and developed online resources to train collaborators on the software. Their work has helped to position Argonne as a strong player in the EIC community.

Each month, the PSE Associate Laboratory Director and Division Directors review PSE Employees of the Month nominations and select recipients. All Argonne employees are eligible for nomination, including people within PSE and those who work with PSE. All PSE staff, postdocs and students are welcome to submit nominations. The call for nominations opens on the first of each month.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.