I'm a novelist (and therefore ignorant about math and science) writing
about a  a geothermal engineer who has hust left her job at Los Alamos
National Laboratories and taken a new job at Sandia National Lab at
Kirtland Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I want to know what are some
specific job title(s) for positions she might possibly hold, and some
basic information about the kind of work she would be doing in each
position. Also, I would like to know whether leaving LANL for SNL
would be a step backwards, rather than forwards, in her career. Is one
lab more prestigious than the other? Or is the difference more along
the lines of the distinction between public sector and private sector?
$5

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Request for Question Clarification by hedgie-ga on 26 Sep 2005 08:53 PDT

Dear girl...-ga

It is not  "public sector vs private sector" . All National Labs are
 - well- national labs. Who is managing them (University of CA for
LANL and LLNL), AT&T for Sandia,.. is mostly of historical
significance.

They are all 'really' managed directly by DOE today:
http://www.doe.gov/engine/content.do?BT_CODE=SCIENCE
 DOE loves to make  multi-lab projects, where corresponding teams
from different labs cooperate/compete, each contributing their
  'core competencies.  It changed (for worse) when some labs were put
 under Homeland Security dept.

Traditionally, Sandia was more computationally oriented (AT&T 'invented' unix)
LLNL and LANL were more physics - but that is historical too.
 LANL was considered a 'better' place to work for (for a scientist) than most,
but recent scandals, (Ho Lee, the 'problems' with the security of data ) --
which all may have been just politics, both office and national --
tarnished their reputation.

Labs tell you quite a bit about what they do:
http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/t/t3/geosciences.shtml
LANL has the most colorful history
http://www.lanl.gov/history/wartime/staff_d-g.shtml
but all labs have similar relationship to geology: 
It started with study of seismic waves to detect nuclear explosions 
(in order to monitor what other nations do and for treaty verifications) 
and branched into environmental studies
(remediation of ground water contamination) etc..

Labs sites tell you rather a lot about this subject:

Just type "geolog" into the search box on the sites

http://www.sandia.gov/
http://www.lanl.gov/

Top right, to get glimpse of activities

http://multimedia.sandia.gov/k2search/servlet/K2Search
[
http://www-robot.lanl.k12.nm.us/search?q=geology&btnG=Search&site=outside_lanl&client=outside_lanl&proxystylesheet=outside_lanl&output=xml_no_dtd
]

Job titles are not really important, 
except perhaps for HR dept, 
and you can get them typing 'jobs' in those search engines:

GROUP LEADER
TEAM LEADER
STAFF MEMBER - OTHER ..

http://www.hr.lanl.gov/JPS/jobsdb.asp?JobType=UC&Order=Organization


There are some good books about the labs, 
which can give you feel for the atmosphere, ambiance:
http://www.namebase.org/sources/YT.html
http://www.sonic.net/~kerry/bohemian/grovenukes.html
http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/GreatExp/columbus.html

In summary, a good scientist would look for a good team
doing interesting, reputable work. The leaders are key,
of course, but so are co-researchers. 
S/he would know people from other labs by reputation, publications 
and often personally. The prestige of the lab itself is secondary.

Hedgie

Dear girl...-ga

  That above is the answer. Not request for clarification. I pasted that 
into the wrong box by mistake.

Sorry about that,

Hedgie