Meet the 2024 Engineering Award Recipients
November 18, 2024
At the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Engineering Awards are presented to recognize distinguished contributions to the Laboratory's engineering and computing objectives. The 2024 recipients are:
Jesse Fite, Collider-Accelerator Department
Jesse Fite has made significant contributions across Brookhaven's Collider-Accelerator Department over a 17-year tenure.
At the LINAC, Fite orchestrated the teardown and reconstruction of sections to accommodate the Optically Pumped Polarized Ion Source. He also led multi-year upgrades to bunching and beam instrumentation components. He implemented operator-less access systems at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory, enhancing user interaction efficiency.
Fite’s work spans crucial projects including the Energy Recovery Linac's high energy dump line design and the Medical Isotope Program's target cooling systems. He designed Ionization Profile Monitors and warm storage cavities for the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron and Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider machines. At the Energy Recovery Linac and Low Energy RHIC electron Cooling program, Fite led the design and installation of critical beam infrastructure, including the boron-nitride-nanotube beam profile monitor and the 2.1 GHz cavity.
Currently, Fite is advancing state-of-the-art technologies as he collaborates on prototype power couplers for the Electron-Ion Collider’s electron storage ring. His engineering endeavors have enhanced mission-critical programs and continue to support the Laboratory's future initiatives.
Robert ‘Rob’ Pisani, Physics Department
Rob Pisani has worked on the sPHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider since 2017 and previously worked on PHENIX for over 20 years. He is recognized by colleagues and collaborators as a top expert in gases and gas systems for nuclear and particle physics detectors, as well as a first-class designer and builder of on-detector electronics and sensor cooling systems.
Pisani led a team that designed and built cooling and gas circulation systems for sPHENIX's ancillary detector subsystems. His team created a half-dozen custom cooling and gas systems, each requiring different fluids, pressures, and temperatures. They provide cooling and dehumidification to all sPHENIX on-detector subsystems, electronics, and sensors, while maintaining instrument-precision gas circulation for subdetectors.
Despite challenges including COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, supply chain disruptions, and a demanding installation schedule, Pisani delivered these complex systems on time and on budget. His innovative designs and technical leadership enabled sPHENIX to achieve the detector subsystems’ commissioning goals and begin physics data-taking, contributing significantly to the experiment's overall success.
Eric Raguzin, Instrumentation Department
Eric Raguzin has made significant contributions to the Instrumentation Department's Data Acquisition group. He provides expert-level knowledge in electronic design, from hardware and circuit board design with mixed analog and digital systems, to firmware development. His work spans from conventional electronics to unprecedented frontiers in space-grade and cryogenic applications.
Most recently, Raguzin made crucial contributions to the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE-Night) project by implementing an adjustable polyphase filter bank and developing the critical calibration system in the system’s field programmable gate arrays. His detailed hardware implementations provided precise control for lunar operations. Throughout his career, Raguzin has advanced neutrino research, managing cryogenic testing of specialized microelectronics and developing testing parameters.
As principal investigator for a Laboratory Directed Research and Development project, Raguzin demonstrated new interconnection techniques for xenon-based particle detection, satisfying stringent electronic, temperature, and radioactivity requirements. He established an ultra-low temperature testing facility for quantum computing applications, opening new capabilities for Brookhaven. Raguzin has installed and tested these specialized electronics at laboratories around the world. He also mentors students and new hires, and volunteers for community outreach events.
Daniel Weiss, Collider-Accelerator Department
Daniel Weiss has served as an exceptional engineering system manager and project engineer in the Collider-Accelerator Department’s Vacuum Group for over 30 years.
During construction of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), Weiss demonstrated outstanding engineering ability as the responsible engineer for internal vacuum components in the 500-meter-long superconducting magnet arc cryostats. His expertise extends to managing ultra-high vacuum systems, a complexity found in only a few particle accelerators worldwide.
Throughout Weiss’ career, he has led the vacuum system design and development for critical systems including electron beam ion source lines, energy recovery LINAC systems, superconducting radio frequency cavities, and BLIP transfer line upgrades. He was lead vacuum engineer responsible for specialized beryllium beam tubes and beamline/detector interfaces at the collision point for multiple RHIC detectors. He led the implementation effort to upgrade several hundred meters of warm beam lines with coated beam tubes and activation processes that helped push RHIC's performance beyond original design specifications.
Today, Weiss continues to advance the Lab through his work with vacuum systems for the Electron Ion Collider, as he remains dedicated to safe operations and engineering excellence.
Wei Xu, Weihe Xu, Juan Zhou, Hanfei Yan, and Evgeny Nazaretski of NSLS-II
This team at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) created an innovative, compact solution for ultra-high-resolution nano-scale imaging for x-ray microscopy in the hard x-ray regime.
X-ray microscopy is an invaluable and powerful characterization tool used in many scientific fields, such as materials science, biology, environmental science, and energy research.
The team developed a monolithic 2D micro-electro-mechanical system (MEM)-based multilayer Laue lens nanofocusing optic.
Wei Xu designed, fabricated, and characterized silicon templates that accommodate 1D multilayer Laue lens.
Weihe Xu assisted in the fabrication and characterization of Si templates that integrated 2D lenses into an x-ray microscopy system.
Juan Zhou fabricated 1D multilayer Laue lens lenses.
Hanfei Yan performed x-ray characterization measurements.
Evgeny Nazaretski was the project lead, who conceived the idea, and served as principal investigator on proposals.
Their work further fosters NSLS-II’s role as a premier synchrotron facility, recognized nationally and internationally, for its development of hard x-ray diffractive optics.
Citations were written with help from AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini).
Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The 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 science.energy.gov.
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