27th Annual Einstein Gala
NEW MEXICO'S BIGGEST SCIENCE PARTY
This prestigious black-tie event is the Museum’s most important fundraising event, and in 2025, it will be held at Sandia Resort and Casino, starting at 5 pm on Saturday, March 22nd. The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History staff and Board of Trustees invite you to dine with us and explore our amazing silent and live auction.
Join us as we honor our National Award honoree (click here for past recipients) for their contributions to the nuclear world, and experience entertainment featuring science experiments that will knock your socks off! Mobile bidding for the silent auction will occur throughout the event, and bidding will continue.
Sponsorship Opportunities Available
Contact Jennifer Galloway, Director of Development, or call 505-245-2137 ext. 110
ABOUT THIS YEAR'S HONOREE
The 2025 Award of Nuclear Science & History honoree is Dr. Sal Rodriguez, Nuclear Engineer at Sandia National Laboratories
Dr. Sal Rodriguez has a Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Engineering, three masters in engineering, computation, and mathematics, a PhD in Philosophy and Apologetics, and a PhD in Nuclear Engineering. He has worked at Idaho National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is currently a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where he has worked for nearly 30 years.
Sal has an excellent background in computational fluid dynamics, turbulence, chaos, refractory high-entropy alloys (RHEAs), energy systems, and high-performance computing, with over 260 national laboratory reports, white papers, presentations, conference papers, and journal papers. He has 17 Technical Advances, two copyrights, three patents, and four pending patents, and is the author of a turbulence/fluid dynamics book, “Applied Computational Fluid Dynamics and Turbulence Modeling.” His book is highly praised by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/1.J060595) and has over 24,000 downloads in 80 countries and 190 universities and a 4.8 out of 5-star rating.
Sal was awarded an R&D 100 Award in 2024, a competition seeking the 100 best technologies globally. The award has earned the descriptive “Nobel Prize of Engineering” and “Oscars of Innovation.” In 2023, Sal was awarded the prestigious Great Minds in Stem’s (GMiS) Scientist of the Year Award. GMiS offers no higher award; this is the first time New Mexico and any Department of Energy national laboratory, including Sandia National Laboratories, won this award. In 2023, Sal won the Division 8000 Employee Recognition Award in Technical Excellence, Sandia National Laboratories’ highest award. Sal won the Distinguished Alumni Award for Nuclear Engineering at the University of New Mexico in 2024, the highest honor the School of Engineering gave. He also earned three Outstanding Innovation Awards at Sandia National Laboratories and a President’s Volunteer Service Award for his work in STEM. In 2021, Sal was inducted to “The Sandian 300+”, a list of top, all-time Sandia National Laboratories inventors.
Some of his key achievements include the application of his copyright to dimple a high-power competition rocket, for which post-flight data showed the drag coefficient was 22.3% lower on average and had a peak drag reduction of 39.1% vs. the undimpled rocket. He also applied dimples to an aluminum plate, generating a 1.7 to 2.4 magnitude increase in heat transfer vs. the undimpled plate. He is collaborating with a company in Nevada specializing in dimpled pistons to improve heat transfer and diesel combustion properties. Independent test measurements have shown the pistons have higher power output and reduced combustion by-products, with up to 30 to 54% less nitrous oxides vs. an unmodified piston. Other achievements include manufacturing the world’s largest RHEA component, designing and manufacturing over two dozen new RHEAs, and the first advanced manufacturing of RHEAs using binder jet technology.
Sal’s innovations have been featured in Forbes Magazine, the front page of the Albuquerque Journal, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sandia Labs News Releases, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the University of New Mexico, and other publications.
He is the founder and lead presenter for the Sandia Science Club at Manzano Mesa Elementary School in New Mexico. Expositions include aerodynamics, nanotechnology, 3D printing, chaos theory, crystallography, biology, chemistry, and mathematics. This effort has provided volunteer science classes to 100 students every Friday during the school year for eight years, with over 700 students being instructed to date. Sal has served over 20 years as a lead presenter for the Sandia National Laboratories MANOS program, a hands-on Science and Engineering Program for Hispanic and minority middle school students. He has directly provided math and engineering presentations to more than 1,200 students and has reached over 1,000 students during Career Day at Calexico High School.
Proceeds from the Einstein Gala help support the Museum’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) educational programs for K-12 students and professional development workshops for science and math teachers.
