SD Management Team
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Meet the Leaders of SD
From delivering essential capabilities and transforming the nuclear enterprise to building safer infrastructure capabilities and developing people and teams, the SD management team leads the way in fulfilling LLNL’s national security mission.
Brad Wallin
Deputy Director
Brad Wallin is the Deputy Director for Strategic Deterrence (SD) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He leads the Laboratory’s nuclear weapons program in its responsibilities to ensure the safety, security, and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear deterrent and to support the transformation of the stockpile and the nuclear weapons enterprise for the future. He is also responsible for stewarding the broad range of science, technology, and engineering capabilities and infrastructure that underpin the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) and lay the foundations for the long-term health and vitality of the Laboratory.
Wallin has more than 25 years of experience in nuclear security, including as Program Director for Weapon Physics and Design, Program Manager for Nuclear Threat Reduction, and as a technical advisor to the Office of Defense Science at the National Nuclear Security Administration. His technical career spans the many disciplines of weapon physics, including design, code development, and management of nuclear and high-energy-density facilities and experiments.
Michael Zika
Principal Associate Deputy Director
Michael Zika is the Principal Associate Deputy Director for Strategic Deterrence (SD) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). As Principal Associate Deputy, Mike serves as the principal advisor to the directorate and key participant in all aspects of the weapons program leadership and management.
Mike has worked at LLNL for 25 years. He has made technical and management contributions across many areas of the weapons program, including computational physics, nuclear weapon design, high-energy-density design, and uncertainty quantification. Mike has demonstrated leadership and knowledge of the core mission of the laboratory—to advance the state-of-the-art in weapon science in support of maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent. Most recently, Mike served as a Deputy Program Director for SD's Weapon Physics and Design Program.
Jong Olivier
Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff
Jong Olivier is the Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff for the Strategic Deterrence (SD) Principal Directorate.
Olivier has a long and accomplished history at the Lab. Early in her career, she built control systems for high-precision inspection machines and for adaptive optics systems in astronomy and high-powered lasers. She has also served in various leadership positions across the Laboratory, including standing up I Division (Optical Science and Technology) as the Deputy Division Leader, and serving as the Deputy Associate Director for Operations in the former Physics and Advanced Technologies Directorate. In the Global Security (GS) Directorate, she served as a Division Leader, as the Deputy Program Manager for Energy Security and Nonproliferation (E Program), and as GS’s Strategic Science and Technology Manager. Prior to joining the SD management team, Olivier was serving as the Principal Deputy Associate Director in LLNL’s Engineering Directorate.
Derek Wapman
Associate Deputy Director for Stockpile Modernization
Associate Deputy Director Derek Wapman joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 1980 and has extensive experience in nuclear weapon engineering and weapons systems project management. He has served as system manager and project engineer for several weapon systems and numerous other weapons-related projects. He was the SD Program Director for Weapon Technologies and Engineering, the Division Leader for Defense Technologies Engineering Division and the SD Deputy Principal Associate Director for Program Planning and Execution. He is currently the Associate Deputy Director for Stockpile Modernization.
Charles Slama
Associate Deputy Director for Operations
As the Associate Deputy Director for Operations, Charles Slama is responsible for the management of Strategic Decterrence’s facilities as well as overseeing nuclear operations, explosive operations, and hazardous waste management for LLNL.
Slama has more than 28 years of experience, having served in the nuclear Navy, at commercial nuclear facilities, and at DOE nuclear facilities, along with a variety of roles including operations, radiation protection, licensing, engineering, project management, and nuclear safety. Prior to joining LLNL, Slama served as the Director of Nuclear Safety and Criticality for Newport News Nuclear-BWXT (N3B) Los Alamos LLC, where he was the contractor liaison for Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. He is also a retired naval officer with 25 years of service, including as a nuclear operator and as an engineering duty offer. Slama holds Bachelor of Science degrees in nuclear engineering technology from Thomas A. Edison State University, as well as nuclear engineering and engineering physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Master of Engineering in nuclear engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Valerie Noble
Associate Deputy Director for Program Enablement
Valerie Noble serves as associate deputy director for program enablement in the Strategic Deterrence (SD) Principal Directorate. In this role, she provides leadership and management of the SD line organizations, Office of Classification and Export Control, SD Information Technology, SD Applications, and SD Knowledge Management. In addition, Valerie leads the development of the staffing strategies and strategic business processes instrumental to successful long-term delivery of SD programs and projects.
Valerie has more than 30 years of experience working in the weapons program where she has gained broad insights into mission needs, drivers, and challenges. Most recently, Valerie served as the deputy chief information officer for Cloud Modernization where she provided leadership and management of the Livermore Information Technology (LivIT) efforts in the use of cloud infrastructure and services to better enable LLNL’s business and mission needs. In addition, Valerie has been leading a key NNSA strategic initiative to modernize the Enterprise Secure Network that provides hosting to crucial applications and services. Prior to taking on the role of Deputy CIO, Valerie was the Applications, Simulation, and Quality (ASQ) leader where she served as the Computing Principal Directorate’s primary interface to SD and the other programs ASQ supports, including Environmental Restoration, Nuclear Material Technology, and Radioactive and Hazardous Waste Management.
Mark Herrmann
Associate Director for Weapons Physics and Design
Mark Herrmann is the Associate Director for the Weapon Physics and Design (WPD) Program. In this role, Herrmann leads LLNL’s efforts to strengthen our nation’s nuclear deterrent by advancing our understanding of nuclear weapons physics and design. This includes the physics design, assessment, and certification efforts for the enduring LLNL systems (W80, B83, W87), the W80-4 Life Extension Program, and the W87-1 Modification program. He also leads weapon science research and development, including focused experiments, integral hydrodynamic and subcritical experiments, high-energy-density (HED) experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), and modeling and simulation using NNSA’s high performance computing capabilities.
Rob Neely
Associate Director for Weapon Simulation and Computing
Rob Neely is the Associate Director for the Weapon Simulation and Computing program (WSC), responsible for management oversight, strategy development, building internal and external partnerships, and stakeholder engagement. Neely has supported the LLNL mission for 27 of his 30 years of experience in high-performance computing (HPC) and scientific software development and now oversees all aspects of the world-class high-performance computing platforms and application development taking place at LLNL in support of stockpile stewardship and nuclear deterrence. Neely received his master’s degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and joined LLNL shortly after as an HPC application developer on the ALE3D project. He has since held several positions aimed at advancing LLNL’s HPC leadership in software and application development, hardware procurements, and computing research—all with an end goal of amplifying our mission impact on national security using simulation codes on modern heterogeneous architectures.
John Miller
Associate Director for Weapon Technologies and Engineering
John Miller is the Associate Director for Strategic Deterrence's Weapon Technologies and Engineering (WTE) Program, which is committed to providing engineering and scientific excellence in support of stockpile stewardship and other critical national security missions.
Miller has been a part of WTE for almost 20 years supporting various weapon system programs including roles on the W80-3 LEP, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, the W78/88 LEP, and the W87-1 Modernization Program. Miller has also served as the Reentry Systems Group Leader and System Manager for the W87-0. From 2018 until 2021 Miller served as the WTE Associate Program Director for Stockpile Systems. Miller received an S.B. from MIT and an M.S. from the University of California, Davis, both in mechanical engineering.
Rochelle Rucinski
Program Director, Weapons Infrastructure
Rochelle “Shellie” Rucinski serves as the Weapons Infrastructure (WI) Program Director (PD) for Strategic Deterrence (SD). In her role as WI PD, Shellie oversees the management and direction of the WI program and serves as a key member of the Strategic Deterrence Senior Leadership Team. She collaborates closely with both SD and LLNL leadership to lead and manage the program, delivering essential weapons infrastructure projects and achieving SD programmatic objectives.
Shellie has dedicated over 20 years to DOE missions in Nevada and has held many leadership roles, including Quality Assurance Supervisor and Measuring and Test Equipment Program Manager. Most recently, Shellie served as the Director of MSTS Enterprise Infrastructure Programs. Shellie holds a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Engineering from Boston University and has a strong history of developing and leading high-performing teams. Her diverse skill set spans program/project management, systems engineering, research and development, quality assurance, strategic planning, software management, risk management, construction management, and manufacturing.
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