LBNL Engineering Division

LBNL Engineering Division Berkeley Lab's Engineering Division creates innovative tools, technologies and solutions to further scientific research.

06/17/2026

Berkeley Lab engineers helped build ATLAS, one of the largest and most powerful particle detectors in the world, and now they’re working on the next-gen upgrade. Meet engineers Todd Claybaugh, Neal Hartman, and Eric Anderssen, and hear what it’s like to be part of team science and play a role in the collaboration bringing science to life.

06/02/2026

How can tiny robots measure entire galaxies? Assembled using specialized tooling, see how Berkeley Lab engineers created Iris, a prototype for mapping the primordial universe. Mechanical Engineer Nick Wenner highlights a key component of Spec-S5, breaking Iris down to its smallest parts, from its miniature motors to its even smaller ball bearings.

05/26/2026

Spec-S5 will map 200 million stars, scaling DESI from 5,000 to 25,000 fiber positioners to answer key questions about the universe surrounding dark matter and cosmic evolution. This has scientists thinking big, but the small details of such an upgrade make all the difference. Zooming in on one of the smallest aspects of Spec-S5, mechanical engineer Nick Wenner explains Iris, a tiny robot with massive potential.

-S5

Technicians and engineers have achieved a major milestone, completing a 2-year project to wind the closed-loop coil for ...
05/19/2026

Technicians and engineers have achieved a major milestone, completing a 2-year project to wind the closed-loop coil for the MARS-D magnet. This magnet will help power the fourth-generation electron cyclotron resonance ion source (ECRIS) for the 88-Inch Cyclotron.

This project involved:
24 wire layers
6,000 meters of wire
27,648 bending corners

Find out how this incredibly challenging and technically difficult work was accomplished.
Read more: https://engineering.lbl.gov/2026/05/14/made-in-berkeley-lab-winding-a-novel-closed-loop-coil-magnet-structure/

More than 20 years ago, Berkeley Lab built the Pixel Support Tube for the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Today, the Engineeri...
05/11/2026

More than 20 years ago, Berkeley Lab built the Pixel Support Tube for the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Today, the Engineering Division is finishing work on the Pixel Support Tube for the ATLAS HL-LHC Upgrade Project–with much of the same team!

“One value that a lot of national labs have, and Berkeley Lab in particular, is that because we have an Engineering Division, we have continuous staff for decades,” says Eric Anderssen, project engineer for the ATLAS inner tracker upgrade. “You often have a lot of churn through universities, but having a consistent staff at a national lab, both the scientists and the engineers, is really something that is invaluable.”

This has allowed Berkeley Lab to pool 20 years of collective experience and teamwork into building the cutting-edge infrastructure and instruments that help make the next generation of ATLAS possible.

First picture, taken in April 2026, from top left: Jon Wirth, Tom Johnson, mechanical engineering associate; Todd Claybaugh, mechanical engineer, Eric Anderssen; project engineer for the ATLAS Inner Tracker upgrade; and Neal Hartman, project engineer for ATLAS Inner Pixel Detector.

Second picture, taken in April 2005, from top left: Jon Wirth, Tom Johnson, Mario Cepeda, Alexis Smith, Eric Anderssen, and Neal Hartman.

The ATLAS experiment is one of the largest and most powerful particle detectors in the world. It was instrumental in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

Photos: Thor Swift, Berkeley Lab; Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab

04/15/2026

Take a tour through the Advanced Light Source tunnel—a place that is rarely exposed to view. The tunnel is where electrons travel at the speed of light during normal ALS operations. Here, it is shown open for maintenance activities and the installation of the new Accumulator Ring! The Engineering Division’s Kyle McCombs provides a look into this major ALS upgrade.

Our electronics engineers are designing microchips for extreme environments. Learn about the prototype microchips we’re ...
04/01/2026

Our electronics engineers are designing microchips for extreme environments. Learn about the prototype microchips we’re developing that will function immersed in vat of liquid argon at temperatures of around -300F.

See how the Engineering Division supports scientific discovery, designing and building instruments that help push the frontiers of knowledge.

Read about the microchip: https://engineering.lbl.gov/2026/03/26/super-cold-and-super-tiny-the-electronics-behind-the-legend-1000-physics-detector/

Engineering Division Machinist Mike Gronley inspects the thickness of a prototype fiber-positioning robot, which he fabr...
03/25/2026

Engineering Division Machinist Mike Gronley inspects the thickness of a prototype fiber-positioning robot, which he fabricated on a wire EDM machine in the Lab’s machine shop. The piece required very tight tolerances, as well as thin features. The thin sections had to be between 0.175 mm and 0.225 mm—that’s about the thickness of two sheets of paper stacked together, plus or minus a couple of pieces of dust!

“The machine shop is the place to bring these kinds of projects,” Gronley says. “For instance, my background of nearly 20 years making medical devices makes me comfortable taking on tricky little parts like this. Between all of the machinists here, we have over 100 years of experience in vastly different industries. This allows us to tackle just about any part, process, and/or material. I take a lot of pride in my work on these projects, where my attention to detail and understanding of the parts' performance requirements can mean the difference between success and failure of the target experiment.”

These prototype fiber-positioning robots are being made for Spec-S5, a next-generation instrument that will map the universe using spectroscopy, continuing the work of the current DESI Survey.

Photo: Nick Wenner, Berkeley Lab

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