One of the unique attributes of working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the opportunity to participate in projects requiring multi-disciplinary teams. For this reason you will find our research is undertaken with scientists from across the whole Laboratory, in particular chemists, engineers, biologist, and more.

Researchers
Collaborations with researchers outside the laboratory are equally important. They provide us with access to world experts, unique facilities, and cutting edge techniques; and provide opportunities for recruiting for our future.

Academic
Academic collaborations range from a single graduate student and their advisor, who might spend a few weeks a year participating in a project here on site, to participating in large multi-institutional efforts, e.g. in high energy physics. Taking joint publications as one measure, then over the past 5 years we have worked with more than 200 departments in the USA. Internationally we have collaborated with departments from 49 countries. Many of our collaborative programs are involved with the Department of Energy. See Facilities for the Future of Science, a twenty year outlook;, DOE/SC-0078, Revised December 2003.

Running down their highest priority facilities, you will find, for example:

1. Our Fusion Energy Program has collaborative programs in theory, experiment and engineering design, all needed for ITER ore about ITER.
2. We have the worlds fastest computer. Our work recently won the Gordon Bell prize.
3. We are working on different projects to understand dark energy: looking for the axion, designing and building telescopes, and interrogating data bases.
4. We have an integral role in the Linac Coherent Light Source, a free electron laser being constructed at Stanford. We are responsible for beam transport, diagnostics and optics, and leading two of the first experimental campaigns. One of these is developing techniques to image any molecule at the atomic scale, and another is the arena of High Energy Density Physics, an area recognized by the National Research Council as a current frontier in contemporary science (Frontiers in high energy density physics, National Academic Press, Washington, DC)
5. We are part of the International Linear Collider, an electron-positron collider to study particle physics (investigating the origin of mass, and electro-weak symmetry breaking). Our expertise in high average power lasers enables the option of photon-photon collisions, and our expertise in metrology enables the remarkable pointing accuracy required.

You will also find us collaborating on the top science questions for the new century (Connecting Quarks with the cosmos, eleven science questions for the new century, The National Acaemic Press, Washington, DC), e.g. looking into: dark energy and matter, how the universe began, the role of neutrinos, and how elements from Fe to U were formed.

One of the ways we interact with academia, working with collaborators, is through our Centers. Two are on site, the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and the Institute for Laser Science and Applications.

We are also participants in external centers, through the National Science Foundation (Adaptive Optics, Self Organized Magnetic Fields, and Bio-photonics), The Department of Energy (Fusion Science Center), and the National Cancer Institute.