Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Director Kim Budil announced today that Michael R. Anastasio is the recipient of the 2025 John S. Foster Jr. Medal. Anastasio is the only person to have served as director of both Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories
The honor cites Anastasio’s four-decade role in U.S. stockpile stewardship, work carried out without underground nuclear explosive testing since 1992, and his advocacy of the Quantification of Margins and Uncertainties (QMU) framework. QMU is widely used across the nuclear security enterprise to evaluate warhead performance under uncertainty.
Established in 2015 and administered by Lawrence Livermore National Security, the Foster Medal is awarded annually by the LLNL director; recipients receive a citation, a gold medal and a $25,000 cash award. Anastasio is the 10th honoree, following Franklin Miller (2024) and Adm. Richard W. Mies (2023). Anastasio previously led LLNL (2002–2006) and LANL (2006–2011).
Anastasio began his career as a designer in LLNL’s B Division, leading underground experiments that advanced understanding of primary performance before the 1992 testing moratorium. As Weapons Program head, he guided technical options for sustaining the U.S. nuclear deterrent during the transition to science-based stewardship. His honors include the National Nuclear Security Administration Gold Medal and the DOE Weapons Recognition of Excellence Award for contributions to boost physics, an area central to nuclear weapon performance.
Anastasio (born 1948) joined LLNL in 1980 as a B-Division physicist, contributed to the W87, W84 and B83 warheads, and took part in 10 underground nuclear tests (project physicist on four), according to Wikipedia. He later served as B-Division leader and associate director for Defense and Nuclear Technologies before the UC Regents appointed him LLNL director on June 4, 2002 (start July 1, 2002); he became LANL director on June 1, 2006 and served through May 31, 2011. During his LLNL directorship the lab logged 25 R&D 100 Awards. He holds a B.A. in physics from Johns Hopkins and master’s/Ph.D. degrees in theoretical nuclear physics from Stony Brook University.
LLNL teams also recorded four wins in the 2025 R&D 100 Awards: In-air Drop Encapsulation Apparatus (IDEA) (Process/Prototyping; co-developed with Purdue University); MetaLitho3D: Metaoptics-enabled Large-scale 3D Nanolithography (Process/Prototyping; with Stanford University); Monolithic Telescopes (Analytical/Test); and Time-Resolved Diffraction for NIF (National Ignition Facility) (Mechanical/Materials; with Advanced hCMOS Systems and Sandia National Laboratories).
