Marcey Abate (M.S. 1993, Ph.D. 1995)
As a doctoral student at Purdue, Marcey Abate did not aspire to work for a national laboratory. "I was sitting in my office one day at Purdue when a Sandia recruiter walked in and asked if I had ever heard of Sandia labs," Abate recalled. "The answer was no! However, I had heard of the manager of the statistics department (Rob Easterling). They asked me to come out for an interview and I fell in love with Sandia and Albuquerque after my first visit."
Abate started at Sandia National Laboratories, one of the Nation’s nuclear weapons laboratories, as an applied statistician in 1995. One of her projects involved actively working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to evaluate aviation safety data, to analyze safety inspection work processes, and to develop system safety concepts. "After several years providing statistical consultations to the engineering staff at Sandia, I became interested in more broad systems engineering applications and subsequently moved out of the statistics group," she said.
Abate now manages engineers. "My current assignment is to manage the stockpile evaluation program that is responsible for developing and implementing a test program for each weapon in the nuclear stockpile," she explained. The weapons include gravity bombs delivered by aircraft and a warhead used in cruise missiles. "We test all the weapons that are in the stockpile, the exact ones are selected randomly. From testing, we may find production or aging type of defects. The random sampling is done using a statistical sampling program. However, as with many other things, there is a fair amount of engineering judgment and economic considerations that come into play during the test programs." As a manager, Abate said, "most of my typical day (80%) is spent in meetings to resolve issues, plan for the future, and provide status updates. Email is rampant and all too easy to access from anywhere! My staff spends much of their time coordinating test programs, working with their team members, and resolving technical issues."
Abate’s time at Purdue prepared her well for her career at Sandia. "My degree provided the necessary credentials to hire into a national laboratory and my time working within the Purdue Statistical Consulting Service provided the practical experience necessary to fulfill the requirements of the assignments," she said. "I worked as a consultant in the service with numerous clients. Some of the more memorable were some nutrition related projects (ADHD children), Food and Beverage studies with the Hotel and Restaurant department, and working with some of the psychologists in the speech department. After a year of normal project work, I spent more of my time helping George [McCabe] with programmatic things (writing the summary report that was published) and helping newer students. It was the best experience of graduate school and prepared me better for life in the ‘real world’ than any class!"
Also valuable for Abate’s decision on a future career was her experience as an intern. "I interned a couple of summers with General Motors. I also used data for my Ph.D. thesis from Eastman Chemical. Both of these experiences indicated that a national lab, with more of a balance between academia and private industry, was a good match for me!"
To current Statistics students, Abate advises, "I believe that the truly successful statisticians are ones that can knowledgeably converse and translate technical questions/issues into a statistical setting. Thus, gaining experience by studying other fields and collaborating with other researchers will help to sharpen these skills. Also, confidence in public speaking and presenting oneself can have a tremendous impact on one’s effectiveness. As such, I would encourage statistics students to take the opportunity to discuss, present, and defend their work in public forums."
For more information on the Sandia National Laboratories, visit http://www.sandia.gov.
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June 2006
