- Science & Technology
INTRODUCTION
International collaboration has been central to the scientific and engineering success of Los Alamos since its inception. The primary mission of Los Alamos remains focused on providing solutions to tough challenges facing the Nation in the context of national and global security. By their very nature, these challenges are complex, requiring innovations in science and technology that leverage and extend developments in academia and industry. Los Alamos has found success in tackling these challenges with multidisciplinary teams that bring diverse insights and perspectives.
This strategy has depended on international collaboration in a variety of forms. At one end of the spectrum, collaboration with international colleagues continues to enrich our teams; these collaborations create new ideas while also serving as effective recruiting opportunities. The other end includes organizational collaborations with international entities (governments, research organizations, and industry); these collaborations help to speed the advancement of fundamental discoveries that are important to our mission, and they do so through an efficient utilization of resources (funding, facilities, etc.). Furthermore, these collaborations can build international networks that are crucial to some aspects of our mission (e.g., nonproliferation).
Below we offer examples of the benefits to our mission delivery that have resulted from international collaboration. We begin by laying out a few benefits that have cross-cut many of our mission areas; many of these benefits mirror those observed in other assessments on the benefits to basic research in national security. We then present several Los Alamos case studies from specific mission areas. And we conclude with a discussion of steps we take to ensure our international collaborations maintain a secure environment that is consistent with our mission and role as a United States national laboratory.
Our assessment is based on the recognition that innovation in science and technology follows a pathway that begins with advances from basic research, some of which are then reduced to practice for a particular application. This pathway is consistent across broad areas in science and technology, both in the national-security space and in the context of commercial applications by the private sector. The early stages of this pathway—basic research—are accelerated through the sharing of information, perspectives, ideas, and resources; and it is this stage where Los Alamos utilizes international collaborations. In the later stages of this pathway where innovations are extended to applications, Los Alamos limits information and collaboration to those with a need-to-know; in other words, information is protected in accordance with United States national-security protocols.
