Robert Wagner, associate laboratory director for the Energy Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been selected to receive the George Westinghouse Gold Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or ASME.
Scientists have uncovered the properties of a rare earth element that was first discovered 80 years ago at the very same laboratory, opening a new pathway for the exploration of elements critical in modern technology, from medicine to space travel.
A global team of researchers set a new benchmark for future experiments making materials in space rather than for space. The team discovered that many kinds of glass, including ones that could be developed for next-generation optical devices, have similar atomic structure and arrangements and can successfully be made in space.
Matt and Brandon traveled to Ecuador's rainforests to map the Coca River with drones. The river is experiencing massive erosion and sedimentation problems after the San Rafael waterfall collapsed in 2020. Their work could help the country save a hydroelectric power plant that provides 30% of the country's electricity as well as roads and pipelines the area's people depend on for commerce and transportation.
A team of scientists led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory found an unconventional way to improve catalysts made of more than one material. The solution demonstrates a path to designing catalysts with greater activity, selectivity and stability.
A team of researchers including a member of the Quantum Science Center at ORNL has published a review paper on the state of the field of Majorana research. The paper primarily describes four major platforms that are capable of hosting these particles, as well as the progress made over the past decade in this area.
.Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing battery technologies to fight climate change in two ways, by expanding the use of renewable energy and capturing airborne carbon dioxide.
This type of battery stores the renewable energy generated by solar panels or wind turbines. Utilizing this energy when wind and sunlight are unavailable requires an electrochemical reaction that, in ORNL’s new battery formulations, captures carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and converts it to value-added products.
A team led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory explored training strategies for one of the largest artificial intelligence models to date with help from Frontier, the world’s fastest supercomputer.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in collaboration with three other national labs, have developed a free online platform to help utilities understand how solar energy projects will affect the operation of their power systems. This capability can increase utilities’ confidence in expanding their solar portfolios, protecting reliable delivery of electricity while supporting U.S. efforts to slow climate change.
A specialized piece of equipment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is used for measurements varying from extremely large structures to quantum. The equipment is available for projects within and outside the national lab.
Local decision-makers looking for ways to reduce the impact of heat waves on their communities have a valuable new capability at their disposal: a new study on vegetation resilience.
A collection of seven technologies for lithium recovery developed by scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been licensed to Element3, a Texas-based company focused on extracting lithium from wastewater produced by oil and gas production.
Under DOE’s Integrated Research Infrastructure initiative, a team from ORNL and SLAC is establishing a data portal that will enable Frontier to process the results from experiments conducted by LCLS-II.
Computational scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have published a study in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation that questions a long-accepted factor in simulating the molecular dynamics of water: the 2 femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) time step.
ORNL researchers Vandy Tombs and Robert Bridges have developed a new method that improves on the standard method of differential privacy to allow healthcare data sharing while maintaining patient privacy.
Research led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has demonstrated that small changes in the isotopic content of thin semiconductor materials can influence their optical and electronic properties, possibly opening the way to new and advanced designs with the semiconductors.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed lubricant additives that protect both water turbine equipment and the surrounding environment.
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and six other Department of Energy national laboratories have developed a United States-based perspective for achieving net-zero carbon emissions. The roadmap was recently published in the journal Nature Reviews Chemistry.
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other institutions joined industry stakeholders in exploring solutions for power grid climate resilience at the Climate READi Southeast workshop co-hosted by EPRI and ORNL’s Water Power Program on April 10-11.
Helping hundreds of manufacturing industries across the United States increase energy efficiency requires a balance of teaching and training, blended with scientific guidance and technical expertise. It’s a formula for success that researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been providing to the Department of Energy’s Better Plants program for more than a decade.
Scott Curran, group leader for Fuel Science and Engine Technologies Research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a Fellow of SAE International and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or ASME.
New research predicts peak groundwater extraction for key basins around the globe by the year 2050. The map indicates groundwater storage trends for Earth’s 37 largest aquifers using data from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory GRACE satellite.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a method that demonstrates how fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials used in the automotive, aerospace and renewable energy industries can be made stronger and tougher to better withstand mechanical or structural stresses over time.
.Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a comprehensive modeling method to better predict the drop in electricity generation when hurricane clouds overshadow solar panels. The team explored ways to compensate for these energy losses with super grids, a collection of grids connected so electricity can flow across island chains or between continents.
Rishi Pillai and his research team from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will receive a Best Paper award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers International Gas Turbine Institute in June at the Turbo Expo 2024 in London.
Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security was awarded a $10 million Department of Energy grant in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to create a pilot regional cybersecurity research and operations center to protect the electric power grid against cyberattacks.
The University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute in February selected a circular bioeconomy project as one of its newest Convergent Research Initiatives for joint research.
Scientists using neutrons set the first benchmark (one nanosecond) for a polymer-electrolyte and lithium-salt mixture. Findings could boost power and safety for lithium batteries.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory chemists invented a more efficient way to extract lithium from waste liquids leached from mining sites, oil fields and used batteries. They demonstrated that a common mineral can adsorb at least five times more lithium than can be collected using previously developed adsorbent materials.
David Sholl has been named the executive director of the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute, or UT-ORII, and vice provost of University of Tennessee, Knoxville, after serving as the institute’s interim leader since June 2023.
A first-ever dataset bridging molecular information about the poplar tree microbiome to ecosystem-level processes has been released by a team of Department of Energy scientists led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Driver uncertainty about access to electric vehicle charging during long trips remains a barrier to broader EV adoption, even as the U.S. strives to combat climate change by converting more drivers. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working to make EV charging more resilient.
.Jens Dilling has been named associate laboratory director for the Neutron Sciences Directorate at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, effective April 1.
Astrophysicists at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and University of California, Berkeley, used the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit supercomputer to compare models of X-ray bursts in 2D and 3D.
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory hosted the second annual Appalachian Carbon Forum in Lexington March 7-8, 2024, where ORNL and University of Kentucky’s Center for Applied Energy Research scientists led discussions with representatives from industry, government and academia to discuss ways to transition to clean energy.
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is providing national leadership in a new collaboration among five national laboratories to accelerate U.S. production of clean hydrogen fuel cells and electrolyzers.
Anna Douglas’ grand vision, strategic moves and laser focus have helped propel her through seven years of building her company, SkyNano, and land $16 million in government and commercial research and development contracts.
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.
The United States could triple its current bioeconomy by producing more than 1 billion tons per year of plant-based biomass for renewable fuels, while meeting projected demands for food, feed, fiber, conventional forest products and exports, according to the Department of Energy’s latest Billion-Ton Report led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
A team of researchers at ORNL demonstrated that a light-duty passenger electric vehicle can be wirelessly charged at 100-kW with 96% efficiency using polyphase electromagnetic coupling coils with rotating magnetic fields.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are taking cleaner transportation to the skies by creating and evaluating new batteries for airborne electric vehicles that take off and land vertically.
Scientist develop synthetic polymers to combat silica scale, the unwanted coating that fouls the surfaces of various engineering systems, such as reverse osmosis desalination water-treatment membranes, heat exchanger components and plant pipelines
For kids in underserved communities, access to STEM experiences does not come as a given. Candice Halbert, YO-STEM founder and chemist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is working to change this. Halbert devotes her time outside the lab to building STEM opportunities for youth in nearby communities.
YO-STEM, or Youth Outreach in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, has served the local community for seven years, and this marks year three for its competitive co-ed robotics teams. Currently, YO-STEM robotics teams, Radium and Gr8ness, rank 16 and 17 out of 145 teams in Tennessee registered for the middle-school robotics competition hosted by VEX on March 8 and 9 in Hendersonville, Tenn. The two teams are also the only Knox County teams in the state’s top 20 for this robotics competition.
Fengqui "Frank" Li is a computational developer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory who uses his background as an architect to expand the landscape of design for his research into building energy modeling and beyond.
Since 2019, a team of NASA scientists and their partners have been using NASA’s FUN3D software on supercomputers located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, or OLCF, to conduct computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, simulations of a human-scale Mars lander. The team’s ongoing research project is a first step in determining how to safely land a vehicle with humans onboard onto the surface of Mars.
Though artificial intelligence decreases human error in experimentation, human experts outperform AI when identifying causation or working with small data sets.
To capitalize on AI and researcher strengths, ORNL scientists, in collaboration with colleagues at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, developed a human-AI collaboration recommender system for improved experimentation performance.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s managing contractor, UT-Battelle, presented a donation of $186,000 to Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development, or SEEED, to support the nonprofit’s third green solar home as part of their Green Construction Program.