Curiosity and enthusiasm for the beauty in every molecule inspire ORNL’s Canan Karakaya, who uses computational modeling to design, improve and scale up chemical reactors that make high-value chemicals & energy-dense fuels.
Scientist Xiaohan Yang’s research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory focuses on transforming plants to make them better sources of renewable energy and carbon storage.
Chuck Kessel leads the national Blanket and Fuel Cycle program, the national Fusion Energy Systems Studies program and the Virtual Laboratory of Technology and co-leads the Liquid-Metal Plasma-Facing Components program. He's devoted his career to ensuring commercial fusion power is a viable future option.
As a computational hydrologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Ethan Coon combines his talent for math with his love of coding to solve big science questions about water quality, water availability for energy production, climate change, and the movement of contaminants through watersheds.
As a researcher at ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE Nanoscience User Facility, Nina Balke explores avenues for fine-tuning materials’ physical properties to solve energy challenges and expands fundamental research opportunities for CNMS users.
Researchers with Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) have developed technology to squeeze materials with a million times the pressure of the earth’s atmosphere while studying them with neutrons. When they bombard these materials with neutrons, the materials provide an unprecedented picture of the changing nature of matter under extreme pressure.
Ada Yonath, a pioneer in using crystallographic techniques to visualize ribosome structure, was the most recent Eugene P. Wigner Distinguished Lecturer at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Her work continues to contribute to ribosomal research, prompting researchers to look more closely at antibiotics that target bacterial ribosomes, including those of pathogenic bacteria species, an avenue that could help reverse current levels of antibiotic resistance. At the talk, she steered conversation to species-specific antibiotic resistance.