Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), led Tuesday the inauguration of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) new office building and conference annex intended to facilitate partnerships of agencies, industry and the academe.
The interconnected buildings feature modernized office and meeting areas for predictive biology researchers, materials and manufacturing, innovation and partnerships office of LLNL and the High-Performance Computing Innovation Center, NNSA said Wednesday.
The 25,000-square-feet Building 642 has 105 offices, two double-sized offices, conference rooms and collaboration spaces while the 2,975-square-foot annex called Building 643 has a lobby and breakroom and can lodge around 90 people.
Hruby said that the past 18 months proved that office work can be done at home and other locations but “most of us draw energy from the people around us.”
“Face-to-face interactions allow us to engage in robust dialogue with colleagues, to sharpen our ideas and thinking, and to mentor and build trust among our work teams in ways that cannot be replicated across a computer screen,” she added.
The construction of the buildings, which is part of the Lab’s Livermore Valley Open Campus' ongoing expansion, started in August 2020. LLNL staff are expected to move into the offices late summer.