Brianna Barbee is taking a childhood lesson from her mother to heart - and it figured into her summer internship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
"My mom always told me, 'You don't want to live paycheck to paycheck' and I really stand by that," she said. "I was always very studious, but I knew I needed to find a career and not just a 9-to-5 job to pay for my meals."
Barbee, who interned this summer with the Diffractive Optics Group, part of the Optics and Materials Science & Technology (OMST) organization, is clearly forging that career path.
She graduated this year with a bachelor's degree. in mechanical engineering from Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) - and was the first in her family to become a college graduate. She will attend North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University in the fall for her master's degree in mechanical engineering.
She is a NoVEL Scholar, along with seven other Lab interns this year. They are part of the NoVEL Consortium, a partnership involving three HBCUs and LLNL, which gives interns the unique experience of working at a national laboratory.
The NoVEL Consortium's goal is to create a pipeline of talent from historically marginalized groups in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines. The consortium is named after the institutions involved - Norfolk State University, Virginia State University, Elizabeth City State University and the Lab - with a focus on research and education in materials science and photonics engineering.
The consortium is part of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)'s Minority Serving Institution Partnership Program, which funds the universities as well as the Laboratory to create a diverse pipeline of talent in STEM.
Vanessa Peters, Physical and Life Sciences (PLS) staff scientist and a NSU alumna, leads the NoVEL Consortium at LLNL. The consortium also involves several volunteers from a variety of Lab directorates, including National Ignition Facility & Photon Science, Strategic Deterrence, Engineering, Operations and Business and PLS, as well as strong support from the Lab's Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accountability (IDEA) Office and IDEA Director Tony Baylis.
"This experience has been great," Barbee said. "I am enjoying this summer. It's uplifting and supportive and everyone's super nice and they're willing to help. I've never worked with lasers or optics, so it's very interesting. I'm learning a lot of new things."
For her internship, she worked on a meniscus coater, a large device built at the Lab for coating meter-size grating optical substrates. For the largest optical substrates, the coater's carriage and holder assembly was seen to droop during operation. The changes in height amounted to just a few tens of microns, but it was enough to prevent the instrument from properly coating.
Barbee was tasked to generate and use a 3D solid CAD model of the meniscus coater to perform a finite element analysis (FEA), a computerized method for predicting how a product reacts to real-world forces such as vibration, heat, fluid flow and other physical effects. The FEA shows whether a product will break, wear out and work the way it was designed.
The project's goal was to determine and recommend changes that can be made to the coater to minimize or prevent the drooping from occurring.
"It has been a pleasure to work with Brianna this summer," said LLNL Diffractive Optics Group Leader Hoang Nguyen, Barbee's mentor. "It did not take her long to grasp the project's objectives and start making progress. She has a strong sense of responsibility - knowing that her internship duration this summer is short, she is extremely driven to get the project completed.
"I have been tremendously impressed with Brianna's self-motivation and capabilities," Nguyen said. "She watched YouTube tutorials and educated herself on how to set up and perform [the] FEA on 3D CAD models that she created. She also is very inquisitive about all the S&T work in our Diffractive Optics Group and wants to know all about the various technologies behind them. Brianna has a very bright future."
Barbee noted that Nguyen even gave her a helium neon laser kit to construct to introduce her to lasers.
Barbee is from Indianapolis, Indiana, and is one of five siblings ranging in age from 4 to 24. She credited her mother and family with supporting and inspiring her to pursue a career.
"My family motivates me to do better," she said. "They all look up to me. They all call me and tell me how they're proud of me."
Growing up, Barbee took a natural liking to math and science. As a high school freshman, she took a survey three times on colleges and careers engineering kept popping up as the top choice. Soon after, she began taking honors physics and chemistry classes and excelled.
After graduating from high school, Barbee wanted the experience of attending a HBCU. She had her heart set on North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University in Greensboro, but chose ECSU because her grandfather and great-grandmother live in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
"That experience was the best experience of my life," she said. "Once I got to Elizabeth City, I didn't want to leave. I love the school. I love the atmosphere."
She recalled her first day at ECSU: "I remember that I couldn't find the building to my class and I was looking lost. A girl came up to me and helped me find my class. We've been friends ever since."
Later that day, an engineering technology professor gave Barbee a surprising career-building offer after just one class.
"He noticed that I'm a talkative person and asked questions," Barbee said. "Literally, that day, he offered me a research experience. He wanted me to work in his lab with an upperclassman who was a junior working on carbon nanotubes.
"I was honestly shocked because it was only the first week and I felt like I didn't even prove myself," she said. "He saw something in me and offered me the opportunity, and ever since, I've been doing research. It built up my resume and allowed me to have a published paper as an undergrad. All my professors are very motivating. They uplift you. They want you to do good. They look out for you. They find opportunities and scholarships."
Another opportunity presented itself last year when Barbee attended a presentation at ECSU by LLNL staff, who described the NoVEL Consortium internship and career opportunities at the Lab. She was hooked.
"I knew I wanted to do this (NoVEL Consortium) internship," said Barbee, who joined the program in August 2023.
Students commit a considerable amount of time to the NoVEL Consortium. There are weekly Friday night online meetups with graduate and undergraduate students, mentors and faculty members from the three HBCUs. Online meetings have included technical talks by LLNL staff and research reports from graduate students.
The consortium also includes workshops on resume tips, crafting cover letters, writing research papers, giving poster presentations and conducting mock interviews for internships.
Barbee credited the NoVEL Consortium with developing her career skills and called the program "a great opportunity."
At the NIF&PS Summer Scholar poster symposium on Aug. 7, Barbee took first-place honors in the Graduate People's choice category for her poster on "Reducing Deflection Using FEA Analysis for Meniscus Coater."
"To get first place feels astonishing," Barbee said. "I'm happy I got to connect with a lot of staff and interns and share my work. It's an honor to hear that they enjoyed my presentation to the point of voting for me."
Apart from pursuing her master's degree, Barbee says she "definitely plans" on returning to LLNL next year and is now interested in working at a national lab.
"I like that, here at a national lab, you can do different things to see what you actually like or matches up to you and your skills. I would definitely consider working at a national lab and coming back to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory because the area is great. The people are nice. Everyone's willing to help you."
- Jon Kawamoto
