Sankey made important contributions to condensed matter theory, the most notable of which is the computer code FIREBALL, which enabled accurate and efficient simulation of complex materials. FIREBALL used local pseudoatomic orbitals as the basis set to solve the
Kohn-Sham equations, which offered significant efficiencies in both computer memory and CPU use. The method has been generalized and extended into a number of
DFT tight binding approaches and was a forerunner to the
SIESTA program, particularly in its use of Sankey's compactly localized "fireball" orbitals. Among many other original ideas, Sankey proposed a means of killing viruses through laser irradiation, essentially by exploding the
capsid from a resonant coupling to the laser. ==Death==