17-05-2025
Sandia Labs director: Nation needs to overcome energy barriers, embrace AI
May 17—When you think of a laser, do you picture it heating something up?
That's not the case for an experimental laser-based photonic cooling system that Sandia National Laboratories is helping test. It's one of a few methods new Labs Director Laura McGill envisions will help the nation address intensive energy demands required for artificial intelligence and data centers.
McGill, who previously worked in nuclear defense for the lab and stepped into her new role at the beginning of May, said in a Wednesday interview that the nation needs to embrace AI, a rapidly advancing field of computer science allowing for the creation of products like personalized chatbots.
"That's one of the advantages of being at Sandia because we work both sides of the problem," McGill said. "We're working on the exquisite AI algorithms, but we also have people who are working on how do we make the energy more efficient?"
She said there are three ways to solve the energy demand barriers: algorithm designs, high power computing infrastructure and neuromorphic processing.
On algorithms, McGill said there are plenty of experts at Sandia experimenting with design techniques to make AI energy usage more efficient. Similarly, computing professionals with access to state-of-the-art resources at the lab are working on the infrastructure side of things.
That's where she brought up the laser technology Sandia is helping Minnesota-based Maxwell Labs Inc. develop to cool computers. Sandia announced the work last month, explaining that a particular light frequency matched with a specific element causes lasers to cool rather than heat things.
"AI is still kind of new," McGill said. "I think there's a lot of opportunity in that space to see how we're pulling on all that energy."
Neuromorphic processing isn't really directly applicable to AI work, McGill acknowledged, but there are a lot of computing areas that replicate the way the brain works and takes less power to run — something experts can study for potential applications in the AI field.
On top of the intensive energy demands, high-tech systems like large training models or data centers take a lot of water. It's an especially prominent challenge in a desert like the Southwest.
McGill said it's important to build these large data warehouses and storage facilities in places where there's water, but added that's not an area Sandia has as much expertise in.
"But we certainly have people that pay attention to the use of the natural resources and how we preserve those as best we can," she said.
Looking at the big picture, McGill said she wants her tenure to be defined as Sandia very quickly responding to the nation's needs.
"I think we lost a little bit of that during the Cold War, when the need for the nuclear deterrent went away. So we went more into more of what we call the stewardship of the stockpile," she said. "So now we're in a mode where we need to pick up our ability to accelerate.
"And that's where my background helps because I worked in (the) commercial industry, and I'm familiar with the digital tools and different ways that you can align the workforce to be able to work more efficiently, and especially in delivering really complex systems."
