STEM educationSTEM education and U.S. national security

Los Alamos National Laboratory director Charlie McMillan will be one of seventeen speakers at this year’s TEDxABQ. TEDxABQ, scheduled for Saturday, 7 September at Popejoy Hall, Albuquerque, New Mexico, is an independently organized event in Albuquerque affiliated with the popular TED Talks series.

A Los Alamos Lab release reports that McMillan will discuss the linkage between early education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (known as STEM) and national security.

“In national security science, we can’t afford to lose a generation of young people,” McMillan said.

“Particularly U.S. citizens. The world is a rapidly changing place.”

McMillan is by law one of four people in the United States who must send an annual letter to the president and Congress assessing the state of weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Because the United State stopped full-scale nuclear weapons testing in 1992, however, the assessments must depend on classified, highly sophisticated computer modeling and non-nuclear experiments.

“It’s like proving that a 40-year old car will start, but without actually starting the engine,” McMillan said. “Meanwhile all the parts are deteriorating. It’s an immense technical challenge that deals with everything from materials science and big data to the mysteries of physics and sub-atomic particles.”

Finding young scientists and engineers with the technical capability — and creativity — to pull this off is critical for the Laboratory. The consequences for the nation go beyond that, however, as McMillan will explain.