About Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The laboratory is one of the largest multidisciplinary institutions in the world. It is the largest institution and the largest employer in northern New Mexico with approximately 12,500 LANS employees plus approximately 3,300 contractor personnel. Additionally, there are roughly 120 DOE employees stationed at the laboratory to provide federal oversight of LANL's work and operations.

Approximately one-third of the laboratory's technical staff members are physicists, one-fourth are engineers, one-sixth are chemists and materials scientists, and the remainder work in mathematics and computational science, biology, geoscience, and other disciplines. Professional scientists and students also come to Los Alamos as visitors to participate in scientific projects. The staff collaborates with universities and industry in both basic and applied research to develop resources for the future. The annual budget is approximately USD 2.2 billion.

Los Alamos is one of two laboratories in the United States where classified work towards the design of nuclear weapons is undertaken. The other, since 1952, is Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.