R. Lewis Steinhoff was honored Feb. 21 as the 1997 Federal Engineer of the Year for the U.S. Department of Energy and went on to become one of the top 10 finalists in this year's Federal Engineer of the Year program, sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers.

A resident of Lake Ridge, Va., Lewis joined the Department of Energy in 1991. Since then he has been involved in projects supporting the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. His efforts have centered around the development of systems for producing tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, in accelerators and reactors. After joining DOE's Office of Defense Programs in 1993, he successfully negotiated an international agreement with the French government relating to technical exchange in the area of accelerator technology. One of the early accomplishments of this collaboration was a four-day technical exchange involving both the French and U.S. teams, each speaking on a variety of accelerator materials and physics topics. Lewis served as the primary liaison with the French and was the organizer of the U.S. team.

A paper he co-wrote, "An Approach to Tritium Production Using a Linear Proton Accelerator," was later presented at a conference in Italy and published in the journal Fusion Technology.

Lewis has represented the Department of Energy at public meetings and technical conferences, speaking on tritium issues, and he recently organized a team from three national laboratories and the Savannah River site that later became the core of the current Commercial Light Water Reactor Project. The project will complete the design, testing and qualification of a system for producing tritium, using nuclear reactors.

Before joining DOE, Lewis was in private industry supporting the Navy's nuclear submarine program. He earned his master's degree in engineering management from George Washington University in 1995.