Meet the 2022 Brookhaven Award Honorees
December 6, 2023
By Hailey Hamilton
Brookhaven Awards are given to recognize key contributors in support functions whose performance and achievements represent outstanding service to the Laboratory. The 2022 recipients are:
Nancy Barci, Environmental and Climate Sciences Department
For more than 30 years, Nancy Barci has strived to ensure effective operations while promoting teamwork and trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
In the Reactor Division, her work reduced potential errors and decreased the resources needed to maintain critical information. This helped set the basis for a solid Conduct of Operations program.
Today, Barci manages a dashboard that includes procedures for administrative functions in the Environmental and Climate Sciences Department. She has gone on to share this process with other organizations.
Through other contributions to Brookhaven, such as volunteering with BERA and inclusive events, Barci has helped create a better sense of community in Environmental and Climate Sciences and more broadly across the Laboratory. She cares deeply about the legacy she is helping create at Brookhaven for those within her department and many outside as well.
Anthony Curcio, Collider-Accelerator Department
Anthony Curcio has taken on pivotal roles at Brookhaven Lab for the past thirty years. He has been successful across the board, contributing to numerous areas within the Collider-Accelerator Department (C-AD), including the Electron-Beam Ion Source (EBIS), Alternate Gradient Synchrotron (AGS), the AGS Booster, Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), NASA Space Radiation Laboratory, and the Medical Isotope Research & Production (MIRP) program.
Curcio has exceptional leadership abilities and excels by optimizing collaborations between unique groups to install and upgrade systems. His knowledge of equipment electronics, skills as a technical supervisor, and commitment to a culture of safety and support have contributed to significant upgrades at RHIC.
Curcio has had major roles in enormously complex, distributed systems, commissioning new devices with exceptionally high availability to advance the research programs C-AD enables for discovery science and technology.
Wai-Lin Ng, Center for Functional Nanomaterials
Wai-Lin Ng has made longstanding contributions to success at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Research and operations at CFN require talent and hard work from many people. Ng’s leadership and dedication to safe operations have been critical for this facility, where researchers work to investigate, understand, and exploit the unique characteristics of materials and phenomena at the nanoscale.
As an environment, safety, and health (ESH) coordinator, Ng has supported safe operations across the CFN's laboratories for staff and users. Her dedication has helped advance the development of a Brookhaven-wide approach to nanomaterial safety as she has overseen responses to internal and external safety assessments and represents the CFN in broader ESH activities.
Ng’s expertise was recognized more broadly, when she was appointed ESH lead for the U.S. Department of Energy's Nanoscale Science Research Centers Recapitalization project. This effort is modernizing the nanoscience capabilities across the U.S. nanoscale science research centers, including at the CFN.
Sean Stoll, Physics Department
Sean Stoll is a research scientist in the Physics Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he has worked for more than 30 years.
Stoll has extensive knowledge in developing detectors and instrumentation for nuclear and particle physics as well as for medical imaging. He has made major contributions for research in each of these areas at Brookhaven.
Stoll had essential roles in developing the calorimeter systems used in both the PHENIX and sPHENIX experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. He was responsible for the construction, assembly, and testing of the 64 sectors of the sPHENIX electromagnetic calorimeter, which employed a novel new detector technology consisting of scintillating fibers embedded in a matrix of tungsten powder and epoxy.
Stoll plans to continue his work for the detectors that will be needed for the future Electron-Ion Collider at Brookhaven.
Ronald Zapasek, Collider-Accelerator Department
Ronald Zapasek is the senior technical supervisor in the Collider-Accelerator Department (C-AD) for both the Collider Electrical Power Supplies and Pulsed Power Systems groups. Within these roles, Zapasek has shown extensive skill for coordinating the efforts of more than a dozen technicians tasked with maintaining, repairing, fabricating, and upgrading numerous systems.
Zapasek’s calm approach to projects allows for work to be done safely and efficiently. He has made significant contributions to operational improvements and helped increase reliability for power supplies at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC).
During a five-year span, hundreds of corrector power supplies at RHIC were removed during summer shutdowns to be extensively reworked, tested, and then reinstalled. Zapasek oversaw this work with his team to ensure it was completed on time.
Much of Zapasek’s work is completed with challenging time constraints and immense pressure. His in-depth knowledge of electrical assembly and construction is an invaluable asset for the Laboratory.
2023-21599 | INT/EXT | Newsroom
