A tremendous achievement in a tumultuous year

Five ORNL scientists have been named by the DOE’s Office of Science to receive significant funding for research as part of the Early Career Research Program. They will receive grants for about $500,000 per year for five years to cover salary and research expenses.

The ORNL researchers receiving awards are:

• Matthew Beidler, a physicist in the Fusion Energy Division, who was selected by the Fusion Energy Sciences Program for his proposal, “Hybrid Kinetic-Fluid Modeling of Tokamak Disruption Mitigation.”
• Melissa Cregger, an ecologist in the Biosciences Division, who was selected by the Biological and Environmental Research Program for her proposal, “Understanding the Effects of Populus — Mycorrhizal Associations on Plant Productivity and Resistance to Abiotic Stress.”
• Fankang Li, a neutron method development scientist in the Neutron Technologies Division, who was selected by the Basic Energy Sciences Program for his proposal, “Resolving the Structure and Dynamics of Advanced Materials with Unprecedented Resolution.”
• Kiersten Ruisard, an accelerator physicist in the Research Accelerator Division, who was selected by the High Energy Physics Program for her proposal, “Advancing Accelerator Beam Modeling via High-dimensional Phase Space Diagnostics at a High Intensity Injector Test Stand.”
• Daisuke Shiraki, an experimental plasma physicist in the Fusion Energy Division, who was selected by the Fusion Energy Sciences Program for his proposal, “Precision Science and Control of Pellet Fueling for Optimizing Tokamak Plasma Scenarios.”

Like their peers before them, this year’s winners represent a range of scientific pursuits and hold tremendous promise to make significant strides throughout their careers. Additionally, this year’s winners embarked on their ambitious projects amid a world changed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like so many other ORNL employees, they have been adapting to working mostly from home and making decisions about how to manage the merging of their family lives and careers.

“With my office now in my home, I found myself working a lot of hours,” Cregger said. “It was an incredibly productive year, but I’m trying to transition back to a more normal work-life balance.”

Cregger and her husband, Austin Lea, helped their two children through virtual school, shared their home with a set of grandparents and conducted many kitchen science experiments.

“We go through a lot of vinegar, baking soda and shaving cream in our house,” she said.

Beidler, along with his wife Caroline and 3-year-old twins, had only been in East Tennessee for a little over a year when he shifted to working at home. In his down time, he dabbled in bread making.

“Everything was shut down and you're not seeing life going on as it usually does. But then you have this bubbling starter yeast and it's alive and growing. You can put all your hopes and dreams in it,” he said with a laugh.

“We can only eat so much bread, so we began to share it with our neighbors,” he said. “Meeting people in our community and seeing them help each other despite the distancing has been a good thing.”

For Ruisard, being comfortable in the virtual world has allowed her to continue her research at home during the pandemic, where she and her husband, George Hine, keep bees, two chickens and six chicks — named for quarks, naturally — and an ever-expanding network of gardens.

“I keep a garden plot at my church, First Presbyterian in Oak Ridge, and also volunteer at another community garden that supplies produce to a local food pantry. I’m also expanding my home garden — I’m starting to reach the saturation point … maybe no more gardens,” she said with a laugh.

Li’s interest in solving problems with a hands-on approach is evident outside the lab. Throughout the pandemic, Li and his wife, Chen, have been renovating their home themselves, first upgrading their kitchen and now refinishing their floors. The pair have two sons.

Shiraki, based at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego, has been splitting his time between working on hardware at the facility and conducting theoretical and analytical work at home.

“Our core ORNL team adapted well and continue to collaborate effectively — being in San Diego, we’ve always operated offsite,” he said.

Perhaps the biggest change for Shiraki this year came in a small package, 7 pounds, 10 ounces to be precise. He and his partner, Ane, welcomed their first child, a daughter, in July.