Head of Livermore Lab drives a TT...you WCTT people need to grab
07-01-2002, 05:41 AM
#1
Head of Livermore Lab drives a TT...you WCTT people need to grab
this guy for your group.
************************8
Copyright 2002 Contra Costa Times
All Rights Reserved
Contra Costa Times
July 1, 2002 Monday
SECTION: A; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1453 words
HEADLINE: Livermore lab director enters public spotlight;
Livermore lab director enters public spotlight
BYLINE: Andrea Widener CONTRA COSTA TIMES
DATELINE: LIVERMORE
BODY:
Mike Anastasio is not who you might conjure up when you hear the words "nuclear weapons designer."
He's a cellist who plays chamber music on a recorder with a colleague at lunchtime, enjoys early-Renaissance concerts and met his future wife at a high school music camp.
He's a sports enthusiast who has played on local basketball leagues, got up early and late to watch the World Cup and refereed in his daughters' soccer league for years before his knee gave out. Now he sticks with racquetball.
He trained in the ethereal, academic world of theoretical physics on the East Coast and Europe, where he developed models to understand how particles interact inside an atom's nucleus and learned a little Norwegian, German and French. But today, Anastasio becomes one of the country's nuclear weapons leaders as director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, one of only three research centers responsible for maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
Anastasio will oversee an operation with 7,500 employees and a $1.5 billion budget. He will earn $315,700 per year and be taking over while the lab faces many changes -- a reorganization to include a Homeland Security "center of excellence," and, potentially, federal direction to design a "bunker buster" weapon and a return to nuclear testing.
Internal lab and Department of Energy politics are old hat for Anastasio, a 22-year lab veteran, but this is his debut in the public spotlight. He hasn't been a vocal spokesperson for the lab, either with the media or the community. He testified before Congress for the first time just last month.
"Survival was my goal, and I think I did that," a relieved and self-deprecating Anastasio said last week from his box-filled office that still displays a teal, maroon and black quilt made by his wife, Ann, and a large plastic goose, a gift from weapons division colleagues years ago.
Unlike many other lab scientists, Anastasio, 53, hasn't hopped from job to job but stayed where he started in 1980, in a division studying the second fusion explosion inside modern nuclear weapons.
He moved through the ranks inside the weapons division until he became the lab's deputy director last year. When nuclear testing abruptly ended in 1992, he was instrumental in designing the program to maintain weapons with computers and experiments, now called stockpile stewardship.
"He had to not only adjust his own thinking to this new set of circumstances, he had to then provide much of the leadership to adjust the attitudes" of other lab staff, said retired Gen. Larry Welch, now president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, who met Anastasio at that time.
It is rare for someone to make it lab director level without earning some ill will, but Anastasio is described, at best, as a teddy bear and, at worst, as a nice guy who designs weapons.
"Mike was not ostensibly running for higher office. That is just not his approach," said John Immele, deputy director for national security at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, who first hired Anastasio at Livermore.
Anastasio is a stocky man with thick gray-brown hair, a matching beard and large glasses with thin, black rims. He drives a sports car -- currently a black Audi TT -- but "I don't go any quicker in that car than I would in any other car." And he's a serious Trivial Pursuit partner.
Born in Washington, D.C., Anastasio grew up in the Maryland suburbs. He took music lessons, played pickup sports games and endured the traditional harassments of two older brothers. He was always interested in science and especially liked math, he said.
Anastasio majored in physics at Johns Hopkins University, and he and Ann married a week after he graduated. The couple met at a family West Virginia music camp because their music teachers were siblings. The two reunited three years later.
The young couple moved to Long Island where Anastasio started graduate school at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. There, they would ride his motorcycle to the grocery store and play in the local symphony -- she played the viola, he the cello.
Anastasio chose to become a theoretical physicist, using equations, computers and brain power to attack problems rather than experiments. He expected to teach college-level physics some day.
Theoretical physicists "are trained to organize things and see where they can begin. In other words, (they learn) how to formulate and attack problems," said Gerry Brown, a professor at Stony Brook who supervised part of Anastasio's thesis.
"He interacted well with other people, but he worked pretty much by himself," said Brown, who said Anastasio was working on a more difficult problem than those of many graduate students. "He is a very dedicated guy. When he takes on something, he finishes it."
After getting his doctoral degree in 1976, the couple went to Germany, where Anastasio worked at the Nuclear Research Center. Their first daughter, Alison, was born during their two years there.
"That was an experience, childbirth in a foreign language," Anastasio said. They also have another daughter, Alexandra.
After a year in France and another in Brooklyn, Anastasio began a search for full-time work, and applied to universities and research labs. He hadn't really considered working on nuclear weapons.
"It was a real stock take. It really took me a while to think whether that was something I really wanted to do," he said. In the end, he decided "it was an opportunity to do exciting technical things that were important to the country."
At the lab, the approach to problems was completely different. In the academic world, scientists reduce problems to fit the skills they have.
"Here it is the other way around," he said. "You have a problem that you have to solve, and usually you have a deadline. Then you say, 'How do I use my skills to get an answer that works?' Not the perfect answer, not the exact answer, which is what you do in the academic world, but an answer that is good enough to fulfill the mission goal."
It was an exciting time to start weapons work, Anastasio said, because two-dimensional computers models were available for the first time, as well as improved weapons test detectors and more sophisticated non-nuclear experiments.
He focused on bringing these experiences together in three different weapons systems, which prepared him for later work on stockpile stewardship.
As a manager, Anastasio likes to talk through the problems he is facing with those around him.
"Sometimes hearing them out loud, even if he is the one saying it, helps him sort out an approach," said Bill Bookless, Anastasio's deputy when he was head of the Defense and Nuclear Technologies division.
In the mid '90s, Anastasio became the de facto technical spokesperson for stockpile stewardship, presenting the concept to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the Air Force and members of Congress, said Vic Reis, then head of DOE defense programs.
"It was a very difficult job because it was very controversial, but he did just a great job of explaining it to people who were not necessarily technical," Reis said.
"The whole way the laboratory operated was really around the development of new weapons and around nuclear testing. And all of a sudden that was gone, so what was the organizing principle and how did you manage?" Anastasio said. "Changing cultures is hard. We're still working on it."
As director, Anastasio said he sees the lab's main role as a technical adviser to policymakers on what can be accomplished and the risks of certain paths. The country is still debating whether that will mean developing new nuclear weapons, which the lab hasn't done since 1992, or a return to testing.
As director, he hopes to focus on maintaining the lab's national security mission, investing in the lab's future and creating an environment where employees thrive.
"We are poised and ready to accomplish a lot in our programs, and we need to do that," he said. "We are ready to make big contributions and we are bringing on new capabilities. ... It is opening vistas to getting real things done."
THE MONDAY PROFILE:
BIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHY
* Name: Michael R. Anastasio
* Age: 53
* Occupation: director
* Employer: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
* Resident of: Livermore, since 1980
* In the news: Anastasio takes over as head of the 50-year-old lab today. As director, he will be responsible for certifying each year that U.S. nuclear weapons still work without testing, dealing with serious recruitment and retention problems and leading the lab into an uncertain future.
Reach Andrea Widener at 925-847-2158 or awidener@cctimes.com.
LOAD-DATE: July 1, 2002
************************8
Copyright 2002 Contra Costa Times
All Rights Reserved
Contra Costa Times
July 1, 2002 Monday
SECTION: A; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1453 words
HEADLINE: Livermore lab director enters public spotlight;
Livermore lab director enters public spotlight
BYLINE: Andrea Widener CONTRA COSTA TIMES
DATELINE: LIVERMORE
BODY:
Mike Anastasio is not who you might conjure up when you hear the words "nuclear weapons designer."
He's a cellist who plays chamber music on a recorder with a colleague at lunchtime, enjoys early-Renaissance concerts and met his future wife at a high school music camp.
He's a sports enthusiast who has played on local basketball leagues, got up early and late to watch the World Cup and refereed in his daughters' soccer league for years before his knee gave out. Now he sticks with racquetball.
He trained in the ethereal, academic world of theoretical physics on the East Coast and Europe, where he developed models to understand how particles interact inside an atom's nucleus and learned a little Norwegian, German and French. But today, Anastasio becomes one of the country's nuclear weapons leaders as director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, one of only three research centers responsible for maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
Anastasio will oversee an operation with 7,500 employees and a $1.5 billion budget. He will earn $315,700 per year and be taking over while the lab faces many changes -- a reorganization to include a Homeland Security "center of excellence," and, potentially, federal direction to design a "bunker buster" weapon and a return to nuclear testing.
Internal lab and Department of Energy politics are old hat for Anastasio, a 22-year lab veteran, but this is his debut in the public spotlight. He hasn't been a vocal spokesperson for the lab, either with the media or the community. He testified before Congress for the first time just last month.
"Survival was my goal, and I think I did that," a relieved and self-deprecating Anastasio said last week from his box-filled office that still displays a teal, maroon and black quilt made by his wife, Ann, and a large plastic goose, a gift from weapons division colleagues years ago.
Unlike many other lab scientists, Anastasio, 53, hasn't hopped from job to job but stayed where he started in 1980, in a division studying the second fusion explosion inside modern nuclear weapons.
He moved through the ranks inside the weapons division until he became the lab's deputy director last year. When nuclear testing abruptly ended in 1992, he was instrumental in designing the program to maintain weapons with computers and experiments, now called stockpile stewardship.
"He had to not only adjust his own thinking to this new set of circumstances, he had to then provide much of the leadership to adjust the attitudes" of other lab staff, said retired Gen. Larry Welch, now president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, who met Anastasio at that time.
It is rare for someone to make it lab director level without earning some ill will, but Anastasio is described, at best, as a teddy bear and, at worst, as a nice guy who designs weapons.
"Mike was not ostensibly running for higher office. That is just not his approach," said John Immele, deputy director for national security at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, who first hired Anastasio at Livermore.
Anastasio is a stocky man with thick gray-brown hair, a matching beard and large glasses with thin, black rims. He drives a sports car -- currently a black Audi TT -- but "I don't go any quicker in that car than I would in any other car." And he's a serious Trivial Pursuit partner.
Born in Washington, D.C., Anastasio grew up in the Maryland suburbs. He took music lessons, played pickup sports games and endured the traditional harassments of two older brothers. He was always interested in science and especially liked math, he said.
Anastasio majored in physics at Johns Hopkins University, and he and Ann married a week after he graduated. The couple met at a family West Virginia music camp because their music teachers were siblings. The two reunited three years later.
The young couple moved to Long Island where Anastasio started graduate school at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. There, they would ride his motorcycle to the grocery store and play in the local symphony -- she played the viola, he the cello.
Anastasio chose to become a theoretical physicist, using equations, computers and brain power to attack problems rather than experiments. He expected to teach college-level physics some day.
Theoretical physicists "are trained to organize things and see where they can begin. In other words, (they learn) how to formulate and attack problems," said Gerry Brown, a professor at Stony Brook who supervised part of Anastasio's thesis.
"He interacted well with other people, but he worked pretty much by himself," said Brown, who said Anastasio was working on a more difficult problem than those of many graduate students. "He is a very dedicated guy. When he takes on something, he finishes it."
After getting his doctoral degree in 1976, the couple went to Germany, where Anastasio worked at the Nuclear Research Center. Their first daughter, Alison, was born during their two years there.
"That was an experience, childbirth in a foreign language," Anastasio said. They also have another daughter, Alexandra.
After a year in France and another in Brooklyn, Anastasio began a search for full-time work, and applied to universities and research labs. He hadn't really considered working on nuclear weapons.
"It was a real stock take. It really took me a while to think whether that was something I really wanted to do," he said. In the end, he decided "it was an opportunity to do exciting technical things that were important to the country."
At the lab, the approach to problems was completely different. In the academic world, scientists reduce problems to fit the skills they have.
"Here it is the other way around," he said. "You have a problem that you have to solve, and usually you have a deadline. Then you say, 'How do I use my skills to get an answer that works?' Not the perfect answer, not the exact answer, which is what you do in the academic world, but an answer that is good enough to fulfill the mission goal."
It was an exciting time to start weapons work, Anastasio said, because two-dimensional computers models were available for the first time, as well as improved weapons test detectors and more sophisticated non-nuclear experiments.
He focused on bringing these experiences together in three different weapons systems, which prepared him for later work on stockpile stewardship.
As a manager, Anastasio likes to talk through the problems he is facing with those around him.
"Sometimes hearing them out loud, even if he is the one saying it, helps him sort out an approach," said Bill Bookless, Anastasio's deputy when he was head of the Defense and Nuclear Technologies division.
In the mid '90s, Anastasio became the de facto technical spokesperson for stockpile stewardship, presenting the concept to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the Air Force and members of Congress, said Vic Reis, then head of DOE defense programs.
"It was a very difficult job because it was very controversial, but he did just a great job of explaining it to people who were not necessarily technical," Reis said.
"The whole way the laboratory operated was really around the development of new weapons and around nuclear testing. And all of a sudden that was gone, so what was the organizing principle and how did you manage?" Anastasio said. "Changing cultures is hard. We're still working on it."
As director, Anastasio said he sees the lab's main role as a technical adviser to policymakers on what can be accomplished and the risks of certain paths. The country is still debating whether that will mean developing new nuclear weapons, which the lab hasn't done since 1992, or a return to testing.
As director, he hopes to focus on maintaining the lab's national security mission, investing in the lab's future and creating an environment where employees thrive.
"We are poised and ready to accomplish a lot in our programs, and we need to do that," he said. "We are ready to make big contributions and we are bringing on new capabilities. ... It is opening vistas to getting real things done."
THE MONDAY PROFILE:
BIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHY
* Name: Michael R. Anastasio
* Age: 53
* Occupation: director
* Employer: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
* Resident of: Livermore, since 1980
* In the news: Anastasio takes over as head of the 50-year-old lab today. As director, he will be responsible for certifying each year that U.S. nuclear weapons still work without testing, dealing with serious recruitment and retention problems and leading the lab into an uncertain future.
Reach Andrea Widener at 925-847-2158 or awidener@cctimes.com.
LOAD-DATE: July 1, 2002
07-01-2002, 06:04 AM
#3
New Member
Join Date: Apr 2000
Posts: 232
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
That's cool. (Except for the not driving fast part.) Livermore is actually
in Northern Cal. about 30-40 minutes East of SF.
It is, however, as hot as Southern Cal with temps often in the 90s-100s.
Thanks for the tip.
Gene
225 TTR
People's Republic of Berkeley
It is, however, as hot as Southern Cal with temps often in the 90s-100s.
Thanks for the tip.
Gene
225 TTR
People's Republic of Berkeley
07-01-2002, 06:10 AM
#6
Yep, I know, used to live out that way. They've changed their group name to
The West Coast TT Owners Club.... ;-)<ul><li><a href="http://www.westcoasttt.com/">http://www.westcoasttt.com/</a</li></ul>
