Feature Articles

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — “They say water is life, and that couldn’t be truer,” said Anne Francis, who has spent her life on the Navajo Nation, watching how water sustains the land, the crops and the herds of cattle on her family ranch.

But life on the Navajo Nation is hard.

The vast landscape is dotted with old-fashioned windmills, and many places are untouched by modern conveniences like electricity. Without the right infrastructure, getting water where it needs to go has been a struggle for generations.

A new technology, developed in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories and New Mexico State University, is transforming that struggle into a sustainable solution.

In a whirling geopolitical landscape of new nuclear weapons, hypersonic weapons, drones and satellites, the U.S. is hustling to test new kinds of radars aimed at detecting evolving threats. Many of these tests take place in a simulated research environment created at Sandia National Laboratories.

In January, Sandia National Laboratories and The University of New Mexico created the Quantum New Mexico Institute, a cooperatively run research center headquartered at the university.

Robert Petterborg saw an opportunity to improve a critical part used to test a weapons system. Using his spare time at work and with the help of his Sandia National Laboratories colleagues, he designed a new cable connector that eliminates misalignments that could interfere with testing and potentially damage hardware.