Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories
B.S. ESM 1992, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
S.M. AA 1994, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ph.D. EM 1999, The University of Texas at Austin
Tracy Vogler is a distinguished member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories. Since joining Sandia in 2001, he has supported a wide range of national security programs through fundamental studies of material behavior at high pressures and strain rates and through applied work on the safety and reliability of DOE systems.
Vogler received his B.S. in engineering science and mechanics from Virginia Tech, his S.M. in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT, and his Ph.D. in engineering mechanics from The University of Texas at Austin. His graduate studies were supported by a fellowship from the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation.
Following a post-doc in the Impact Physics Branch of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Vogler joined the experimental shock physics group at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2001. In 2008, he moved to Sandia’s site in Livermore, California.
At Sandia, Vogler has supported a wide range of national security programs through fundamental studies of the behavior of materials at high pressures and strain rates. This work has primarily involved understanding the strength and failure of material as well as phenomena at engineering length scales that emerge from lower length scales. This research has utilized experimental capabilities including Sandia’s Z machine, gas guns, explosive facilities, the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne, and the proton radiographic facility at Los Alamos as well as the DOE’s high performance computing capabilities for continuum, mesoscale, atomic, and ab initio simulations. Since moving to California, he has also supported the development and sustainment of DOE systems through large-scale simulations and experiments.
Vogler has been active in the American Physical Society’s Topical Group on Shock Compression of Condensed Matter including serving as the group’s secretary-treasurer (2007-2009), co-organizing their biennial international conference (2011), serving as the vice-chair/chair-elect/chair (2011-2013), and in several other roles including founding and running the group’s virtual seminar series that began in 2020. He was selected as a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2019. Vogler has also served on the selection committee of the DOE NNSA’s Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship since 2008, on the external advisory committee for the UT Austin ASE/EM department (2013-2015) and on the National Academies external advisory committee for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (2015-2016).
Vogler lives in Livermore, California with his wife, Leah Larkin, who received her Ph.D. in botany from UT Austin. They have two children, Chase and Molly. He enjoys coaching youth running, having started a successful cross country team in Livermore and competing in endurance events including triathlons and in recent years, ultramarathons.
