ALS-United is an opportunity to meet the people collaborating at the Advanced Light Source and the ALS Upgrade Project. Hear firsthand how team science enables the cutting-edge research of today and builds the facility of the future. This month, we speak with Steve Rossi (ALS Deputy for Business Operations), Daniela Leitner (Engineering Division Director, ALS-U System Lead for Removal & Installation), and Andrew Netto (ALS-U Deputy for Operations).
View the text Q&A after the video:
What career path led you to the ALS?
Leitner: My background is in heavy-ion accelerators, but over my career I always worked on the crossroads between engineering and physics. After working at the largest heavy-ion superconducting linac in the US, I started the crossover to engineering, and now I’m the Engineering Division Director at Berkeley Lab.
The road of careers is always interesting and colorful. I started as a full scientist and now I’m managing a large facility and enjoying this very intense and exciting upgrade project.
Netto: My career has been divided in two distinct phases. The first phase was in Department of Defense contracts on the commercial side. That was on the east coast. I came to lovely California and pivoted into nonprofit research environments.
What led me here was the excitement of working on a project of this size and the science that it will ultimately bring to humanity. I think that that’s very exciting! I’m very happy to be here and have met some wonderful people.
Rossi: I’m home grown. I’ve been at the Lab and at the Advanced Light Source for over 25 years. When I first started here, I came into what was then the Planning group, working on finance, budgets. I got into project management, and with a lot of hard work and some good luck along the way, I’ve been able to establish a pretty exciting and fulfilling career here. I’ve been in my current role since 2017.
Leitner: We have very different backgrounds, and it’s a very colorful team. It has to be because it’s such a big big endeavor that we are undertaking here. We need expertise from a wide spectrum of professionals.
How do you all work together in your roles?
Netto: Of all the places I’ve worked, the environment and culture here, the fact that everybody steps up and helps each other, the support structure that the lab offers, the greater community here, I think is excellent and wonderful, and I’m very happy to be part of this.
Rossi: For Andrew and I, it’s about resources and coordinating the limited space and people that we have.
Netto: Exactly, that’s how Steve and I operate. Whenever we have needs for resources, generally space, I’ll reach out to Steve and we’ll figure something out.
Leitner: Steve and Andrew are kind of the glue of my work, because the ALS-U project is of course hosted in the Advanced Light Source facility, and we’re installing the accumulator ring as guests of the ALS. Steve is instrumental in making this happen.
Rossi: All pre-dark time work is being done under ALS operations’ umbrella, within all of our safety processes and procedures. And so I’ve always joked that Daniela was the pitcher and I was the catcher. She’s got all this hardware, and it’s got to get into the ALS. We’re making sure that it gets in safely.
Leitner: It’s kind of a miracle that we are getting two accelerators into the space of one, and at the same time trying to run them both!
What is happening with the ALS upgrade, and what can we look forward to?
Rossi: The accumulator ring installation is 90% complete. We have the last couple rafts to install.
Leitner: Exactly, and that will happen in the summer when we connect the existing injector to the new (accumulator) ring as well as continue injecting into the existing (storage) ring. It’s very exciting to see all this coming together now. Whenever we go in and shut down the machine, science stops, so we need to be very sensitive. But of course, the community will be extremely excited about the next phase when we take the existing machine out and put the new high-performance accelerator in. That will deliver a beam that is several orders of magnitudes more intense and diffraction limited, and all the science that we are doing right now will go much faster!
What do you like to do for fun?
Rossi: My first and foremost identity is being a dad, and after that I hike, I bike. Is it a hobby to eat and drink, because I certainly do those things.
Leitner: I really like wind sports. I’m a wind surfer and recently started winging. That has made me like the fog, because fog brings wind. That’s when the wind surfers and wingers get excited, because they can go out on the bay and surf in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is a real privilege.
Netto: Since moving out here, my wife and kids and myself, we find the natural beauty of the state to be very inviting and exciting. So we have a Class B RV, and we like to take little excursions to Yosemite or around. We haven’t seen all of California yet, it’s a very large state, but we’ve been to some pretty neat, cool places. The other thing I do is play guitar. As a matter of fact, I’ve been recording some songs with a couple of folks from the lab, some ALS-U songs!