The second annual Digital Engineering Workshop at Sandia is being hailed as a success. More than 350 people, including attendees from other national laboratories, participated both in person and virtually. Digital engineering is an integrated digital approach that applies authoritative data and models as a continuum across disciplines.

Rita Gonzales, associate Labs director for Nuclear Deterrence Modernization and Future Systems, delivered the keynote speech on the opening day. She emphasized that digital engineering will transform how Sandia performs its work, enabling the Labs to be more efficient and effective for the benefit of the nation. “Digital engineering will be the key to transforming production. This transformation is a journey that requires time, effort, strong partnerships and commitment,” Rita said. One of the primary goals of digital engineering is to help members of the workforce become better designers.

The workshop took place May 9-11 at the Steve Schiff Auditorium. Other keynote speakers included Jennifer Gaudioso, computing research director at Sandia, and Christopher Ritter, digital engineering director at Idaho National Laboratory. A common theme that emerged during the keynotes and throughout the workshop was the significance of collaboration across the nuclear security enterprise.

“The workshop highlighted the desire for cross-site collaboration in digital engineering transformation efforts, with the goal of sharing technologies, processes and lessons learned,” said Michael Mitchell, who is involved in leading the implementation of digital engineering at Sandia. “Digital engineering has the potential to significantly improve mission delivery across NNSA.”

NNSA, NASA, Raytheon Technologies Corp. and other key partners also participated in the workshop, which featured more than 30 presentations and a poster session. Sandia is already looking forward to hosting the third annual Digital Engineering Workshop next year.