Vincent Tang
Dr. Vincent Tang is the principal deputy director for the National Ignition Facility & Photon Science (NIF&PS) Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). In this role, Tang supports the execution of NIF&PS missions and sustainment of its workforce, and the integration of NIF&PS technology development efforts with LLNL’s experimental High Energy Density Science (HEDS) expertise to create new capabilities for Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Stockpile Stewardship Program and national security missions.
Dr. Tang began his career at LLNL in 2006, leading and developing multiple efforts in compact accelerators, pulsed-plasma radiation sources, and associated national security applications. During 2013 to 2019, he was a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he created and led the agency’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction initiative, SIGMA and SIGMA+. He also created and led DARPA’s Intense and Compact Neutron Sources (ICONS) program as well as the Accelerated Computation for Efficient Scientific Simulation (ACCESS) program. He was named DARPA’s Program Manager of the Year in 2016, was a finalist for the 2017 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal, and was awarded DARPA’s Superior Public Service Medal in 2019.
Dr. Tang returned to LLNL in 2019 as the leader of the Laser Systems Engineering and Operations division and served in multiple leadership roles within NIF&PS, including as the integrated product team lead for MagNIF, helping to develop and operationalize magnetic field capability for NIF targets as a disruptive path to increase fusion yield and for other national security applications.
Tang earned a dual B.S. in nuclear and chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and a S.M. in nuclear engineering and Ph.D. in applied plasma physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.