A team of scientists with Oak Ridge National Laboratory has investigated the behavior of hafnium oxide, or hafnia, because of its potential for use in novel semiconductor applications.
Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Northeastern University modeled how extreme conditions in a changing climate affect the land’s ability to absorb atmospheric carbon — a key process for mitigating human-caused emissions.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists studied hot springs on different continents and found similarities in how some microbes adapted despite their geographic diversity. The findings yield clues to the evolution of life and whether some of the hardiest microbes may be harnessed for biotechnology.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science has selected three Oak Ridge National Laboratory research teams to receive funding through DOE’s new Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment, or BRaVE, initiative. BRaVE, announced earlier this year, aims to build on biopreparedness research that delivered high-impact results in the fight against COVID-19.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory has launched a new entrepreneurial start-up program, Safari, as an addition to the Department of Energy Office of Technology Transitions Practices to Accelerate the Commercialization of Technologies, or PACT, program.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing advanced automation techniques for desalination and water treatment plants, enabling them to save while providing affordable drinking water to small, parched communities without high-quality water supplies.
Isotopes — atoms of a particular element that have different numbers of neutrons — can be used for a variety of tasks, from tracking climate change to conducting medical research.Investigating rare isotopes, which have extreme neutron-to-proton imbalances and are often created in accelerator facilities, provides scientists with opportunities to test their theories of nuclear structure and to learn more about isotopes that have yet to be utilized in application.
Subho Mukherjee, an R&D associate in the Vehicle Power Electronics Research group at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been elevated to the grade of senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE. Senior IEEE members have made significant contributions to the profession and worked in the engineering field for 10 years or more.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created a new detection system that allows home energy auditors to see air leaking from a building in real time with the help of a camera. It’s an advancement that could provide more accurate readings far more quickly than current diagnostic tools allow.
Michelle Kidder, a senior R&D staff scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has received the American Chemical Society’s Energy and Fuels Division’s Mid-Career Award for sustained and distinguished contributions to the field of energy and fuel chemistry. She was recognized for her scientific community service, leadership and contributions. Her research focuses on novel material development, methods and advanced characterizations for the separation and reaction chemistry of renewable energy resources including lignin and carbon dioxide.
A licensing agreement between the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and research partner ZEISS will enable industrial X-ray computed tomography, or CT, to perform rapid evaluations of 3D-printed components using ORNL’s machine learning algorithm, Simurgh.
Nearly 100 interns were introduced to Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s biological and environmental research over the summer of 2023 as mentors and students were eager to share knowledge and skills to address the nation’s energy and environmental challenges.
Bryan Maldonado, a dynamic systems and controls researcher at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been recognized by the 2023 Hispanic Engineer National Achievements Awards Conference, or HENAAC, with the Most Promising Engineer Award.
After appearing in the Bond film, “GoldenEye,” the Arecibo Observatory was the world’s largest radio telescope until December 2020, when its cable wires slipped causing the platform to collapse. Neutron imaging on failed cable sockets was performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Timothy Gray led a study that may have revealed an unexpected change in the shape of an atomic nucleus. The finding could affect our understanding of what holds nuclei together, how protons and neutrons interact and how elements form.
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutrons and x-rays to draw a roadmap of every atom, chemical bond and electrical charge inside a key metabolic pathway in the body that cancer cells hijack and dramatically overuse to reproduce. The study essentially paves the way for developing new drugs that act as roadblocks that cut off the supply of vital resources to cancer cells. The drugs would be designed to target highly aggressive tumor-forming cancers that too often become terminal such as lung, colon, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers.
Kashif Nawaz and Mahabir Bhandari, building technologies researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, were recognized for research achievements in support of ASHRAE during the 2023 annual conference of the national heating, refrigerating, and air-conditioning engineering society.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a training camp to help manufacturing industries reduce energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and improve cost savings.
In the search for ways to fight methylmercury pollution in global waterways, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory discovered that some forms of phytoplankton are good at degrading the substance.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Department of Energy’s largest multidisciplinary laboratory, and Fairbanks Morse Defense (FMD), a portfolio company of Arcline Investment Management, have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on the development and integration of alternative fuel technologies aimed at reducing the marine engine’s reliance on fossil fuels.
Entrepreneur-fellows in Innovation Crossroads, a Department of Energy Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will complete the Spark Cleantech Accelerator, a 12-week program offered by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Spark Innovation Center at the UT Research Park.
Since its inception in 2010, the Early Career Research program bolsters national scientific discovery by supporting early career researchers in fields pertaining to the Office of Science.
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.