Jason Brodsky
July 10, 2025
What do you like about your job and/or about working at the Lab?
I love getting to work with experts outside of my field. It's so easy to create a multidisciplinary team or work on a team outside my own field.
What do your day-to-day work activities include?
I'm running a project with a team of six right now, so I spend a lot of my week checking in with the team. We're developing machine learning for physics data analysis, so it's a lot of collaborative coding. I do a lot of writing to keep the project going and propose new projects to carry our work forward. Like many LLNL scientists, I don't just work on one project. On my other projects, I'm often called in to write some code that solves a data analysis problem.
What is one project you’re really proud to have worked on?
I came up with a pretty wild concept for a neutron detector based on 3D-printed plastic scintillators. I proposed and led a project where we developed printable scintillators and showed what kinds of new detectors they enabled.
What is your educational/career background?
After college, I got my PhD in physics and then came to LLNL as a postdoc.
What inspired you to go into science/your field of work?
Science fiction! Many of the amazing things in science fiction aren't possible with known science, so I want to work on fundamental physics and figure out which laws can be broken.
What advice would you give to a new employee at the Lab?
Coming up with good ideas for new projects takes a lot of practice. You get that practice by developing your wacky ideas—talk about them with your colleagues, write them into proposals, and see what kind of feedback you get. They won't all be winners, but you'll get better at figuring out the good ideas as you go.
What are your hobbies/what do you do in your free time?
I spend most of my free time with my two kids, but when I get some time for myself, I love live action roleplaying (LARP).
How many years have you worked at the Lab?
10
Where are you from?
Edgemont, New York
Do you support disciplines or programs outside PLS?
Global Security
