Seven entrepreneurs will embark on a two-year fellowship as the seventh cohort of Innovation Crossroads kicks off this month at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Representing a range of transformative energy technologies, Cohort 7 is a diverse class of innovators with promising new companies.
Dean Pierce of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a research team led by ORNL’s Alex Plotkowski were honored by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office for development of novel high-performance alloys that can withstand extreme environments.
Using the full capabilities of the Quantinuum H1-1 quantum computer, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory not only demonstrated best practices for scientific computing on current quantum systems but also produced an intriguing scientific result. By modeling singlet fission — in which absorption of a single photon of light by a molecule produces two excited states — the team confirmed that the linear H4 molecule’s energetic levels match the fission process’s requirements.
Wildfires are an ancient force shaping the environment, but they have grown in frequency, range and intensity in response to a changing climate. At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists are working on several fronts to better understand and predict these events and what they mean for the carbon cycle and biodiversity.
Xiao-Ying Yu, a distinguished scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a Fellow of AVS, the American Vacuum Society.
Wildfires have shaped the environment for millennia, but they are increasing in frequency, range and intensity in response to a hotter climate. The phenomenon is being incorporated into high-resolution simulations of the Earth’s climate by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with a mission to better understand and predict environmental change.
UT-Battelle, LLC, has appointed Stephen K. Streiffer to be the next director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He currently serves as interim director at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and will join ORNL in October.
When geoinformatics engineering researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory wanted to better understand changes in land areas and points of interest around the world, they turned to the locals — their data, at least. Through an intelligent combination of geotagged social media, global location and natural language data, ORNL’s Junchuan Fan and Gautam Thakur developed MapSpace, a publicly available, scalable land-use modeling framework.
The Spallation Neutron Source at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory set a world record when its particle accelerator beam operating power reached 1.7 megawatts, substantially improving on the facility’s original design capability.
Research into a new, unique technology to fabricate composite metal parts for a wide range of applications operating in extreme environments across the aviation, space and energy industries is showing promise for additive manufacturing.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers used images from a photo-sharing website to identify crude oil train routes across the nation to provide data that could help transportation planners better understand regional impacts.
The lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles are key to a clean energy economy. But their electrodes are usually made using a wet slurry with toxic solvents, an expensive manufacturing approach that poses health and environmental risks.Early experiments at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have revealed significant benefits to a dry battery manufacturing process.
Over the past decade, teams of engineers, chemists and biologists have analyzed the physical and chemical properties of cicada wings, hoping to unlock the secret of their ability to kill microbes on contact. If this function of nature can be replicated by science, it may lead to products with inherently antibacterial surfaces that are more effective than current chemical treatments.
The International Standards Organization has put its stamp of approval on 18 nuclear analytical chemistry methods at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. These testing and calibration methods have received ISO 17025 accreditation.
Experts across varied technology fields gathered at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to collaborate on the future of geospatial systems at the Trillion-Pixel GeoAI Challenge workshop. The third iteration of this event focused on multimodal advances in the field, including progress in artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, high-performance computing and remote sensing.
As extreme weather devastates communities worldwide, scientists are using modeling and simulation to understand how climate change impacts the frequency and intensity of these events. Although long-term climate projections and models are important, they are less helpful for short-term prediction of extreme weather that may rapidly displace thousands of people or require emergency aid.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers developed a model framework that identifies ways to ensure wildlife can safely navigate their habitats while not unduly affecting infrastructure.
Four firms doing business with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory received ORNL Small Business Awards during an awards ceremony on June 29.
Researchers used neutrons to peer inside a working solid-state battery and discovered that its excellent performance results from an extremely thin layer, across which charged lithium atoms quickly flow as they move from anode to cathode and blend into a solid electrolyte.
Creating energy the way the sun and stars do — through nuclear fusion — is one of the grand challenges facing science and technology. What’s easy for the sun and its billions of relatives turns out to be particularly difficult on Earth.
On Earth, scientists must generate, confine and sustain a superhot gas called plasma — heated to 10 times the temperature of the center of the sun — to cause a fusion reaction. Although terrestrial plasmas can be confined magnetically, what materials can withstand near such high temperatures and the relentless impact of energetic neutrons? That question is central to the development of economical fusion power plants to provide abundant and carbon-free energy.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been working with Japanese scientists under the Japan-U.S. Fusion Cooperation Program for decades to determine the answer.
An advance in a topological insulator material — whose interior behaves like an electrical insulator but whose surface behaves like a conductor — could revolutionize the fields of next-generation electronics and quantum computing, according to scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Working with Western Michigan University and other partners, Oak Ridge National laborator engineers are placing low-powered sensors in the reflective raised pavement markers that are already used to help drivers identify lanes. Microchips inside the markers transmit information to passing cars about the road shape to help autonomous driving features function even when vehicle cameras or remote laser sensing, called LiDAR, are unreliable because of fog, snow, glare or other obstructions.
When opportunity meets talent, great things happen. The laser comb developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory serves as such an example.
John Gearhart has been named director of the Environment, Safety, Health and Quality Directorate at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, effective June 19.
Like most scientists, Chengping Chai is not content with the surface of things: He wants to probe beyond to learn what’s really going on. But in his case, he is literally building a map of the world beneath, using seismic and acoustic data that reveal when and where the earth moves.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers, in collaboration with Enginuity Power Systems, demonstrated that a micro combined heat and power prototype, or mCHP, with a piston engine can achieve an overall energy efficiency greater than 93%.
Stan David, retired scientist and Corporate Fellow Emeritus at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was awarded the Joining and Welding Science Award from the Joining and Welding Research Institute at Osaka University, Japan.
Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have invented a coating that could dramatically reduce friction in common load-bearing systems with moving parts, from vehicle drive trains to wind and hydroelectric turbines.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists found that a small tweak created big performance improvements in a type of solid-state battery, a technology considered vital to broader electric vehicle adoption.
An innovative and sustainable chemistry developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory for capturing carbon dioxide from air has been licensed to Holocene, a Knoxville-based startup focused on designing and building plants that remove carbon dioxide from atmospheric air.
Rigoberto Advincula, a renowned scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Tennessee, has won the Netzsch North American Thermal Analysis Society (NATAS) Fellows Award for 2023.
Nature-based solutions are an effective tool to combat climate change triggered by rising carbon emissions, whether it’s by clearing the skies with bio-based aviation fuels or boosting natural carbon sinks. At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists are leading research to transform plants into key drivers of decarbonization, from creating biomass crops for new fuels to enhancing the ability of plants to absorb and store carbon.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory joins four other national laboratories — Idaho, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley — that have institutes named after nuclear chemist and Nobel Prize winner Glenn T. Seaborg.
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Matt Sieger has been named the project director for the OLCF-6 effort. This next OLCF undertaking will plan and build a world-class successor to the OLCF’s still-new exascale system, Frontier.
Scientists working in the lab have produced a signature nuclear reaction that occurs on the surface of a neutron star gobbling mass from a companion star. Their achievement improves understanding of stellar processes generating diverse nuclear isotopes.
As a biogeochemist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Matthew Berens studies how carbon, nutrients and minerals move through water and soil. In this firsthand account, Berens describes recent fieldwork in Louisiana with colleagues to better understand coastal ecosystems.
With the world’s first exascale supercomputing system now open to full user operations, research teams are harnessing Frontier’s power and speed to tackle some of the most challenging problems in modern science.The HPE Cray EX system at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory debuted in May 2022 as the fastest computer on the planet and first machine to break the exascale barrier at 1.
Kelly Chipps of Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been appointed to the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, which provides official advice to the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
ORNL’s electromagnetic isotope separator, or EMIS, made history in 2018 when it produced 500 milligrams of the rare isotope ruthenium-96, unavailable anywhere else in the world.
Tomonori Saito, a distinguished innovator in the field of polymer science and senior R&D staff member at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was honored on May 11 in Columbus, Ohio, at Battelle’s Celebration of Solvers.
Nonfood, plant-based biofuels have potential as a green alternative to fossil fuels, but the enzymes required for production are too inefficient and costly to produce. However, new research is shining a light on enzymes from fungi that could make biofuels economically viable.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists led the development of a supply chain model revealing the optimal places to site farms, biorefineries, pipelines and other infrastructure for sustainable aviation fuel production.
A method using augmented reality to create accurate visual representations of ionizing radiation, developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been licensed by Teletrix, a firm that creates advanced simulation tools to train the nation’s radiation control workforce.
An Oak Ridge National Laboratory-developed advanced manufacturing technology, AMCM, was recently licensed by Orbital Composites and enables the rapid production of composite-based components, which could accelerate the decarbonization of vehicles, airplanes and drones.
For decades, scientists sought a way to apply the outstanding analytical capabilities of neutrons to materials under pressures approaching those surrounding the Earth’s core. These extreme pressures can rearrange a material’s atoms, potentially resulting in interesting new properties.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory leadership and staff gathered at the lab’s main campus in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on April 27 to dedicate a renovated International Hall of flags and unveil new displays reflecting the lab’s rich 80-year history.
Inspired by one of the mysteries of human perception, an ORNL researcher invented a new way to hide sensitive electric grid information from cyberattack: Within a constantly-changing color palette.