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Researcher Ryan McManamay holds a lake sturgeon in ORNL's Aquatic Ecology Laboratory.

Growing up in South Carolina, Ryan McManamay enjoyed a nature-rich upbringing. Both of his parents are retired teachers from the public school system and instilled in him early an appreciation for immersive learning as well as a love of the outdoors. His father, a biology teacher,...

A combination of X-ray and neutron scattering has revealed new insights into how a highly efficient industrial enzyme is used to break down cellulose. Knowing how oxygen molecules (red) bind to catalytic elements (illustrated by a single copper ion).
Producing biofuels like ethanol from plant materials requires various enzymes to break down the cellulosic fibers. Scientists using neutron scattering have identified the specifics of an enzyme-catalyzed reaction that could significantly reduce the total amount of enzymes used, impro...
Ben Doughty
No two scientists have the same story about how they ended up in their field. Some people seem to have been born scientists; others develop their love for it as budding minds full of curiosity. Then there are those who don’t discover science until later in life, but when they do, the...
Claus Daniel, director of the Sustainable Transportation program at ORNL. Photo by Carlos Jones, ORNL.

Claus Daniel was initially attracted to the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory by its reputation as a world leader in materials research. What has kept him at the lab is the opportunity to work with experts across many disciplines using the latest tools to convey ba...

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Xin Sun spent her early career helping define a new scientific field, and now she plans to use her technical and managerial experience to expand the capabilities of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Energy and Transportation Science Division (ETSD) as she steps in as division director. Xin t...

As neutrons (blue line) scatter off the graphene-like honeycomb material, they produce a magnetic Majorana fermion (green wave) that moves through the material disrupting or breaking apart magnetic interactions between “spinning” electrons.

Neutron scattering has revealed in unprecedented detail new insights into the exotic magnetic behavior of a material that, with a fuller understanding, could pave the way for quantum calculations far beyond the limits of the ones and zeros of a computer’s binary code. ...

Eck Cylinder Head

Wisconsin’s Eck Industries has signed an exclusive license for the commercialization of a cerium-aluminum (Ce-Al) alloy co-developed by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory that is ideal for creating lightweight, strong componen...

A novel approach developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory could streamline processes for locating oil and natural gas in shale.

Finding optimal locations for extracting petroleum and natural gas from shale could become more economical and efficient thanks to a new approach developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The research team combined two existing statistical models and applied them to publicly availab...

ORNL’s Sergei Kalinin and Rama Vasudevan (far left) used scanning probe microscopy to discover inseparable interplay between bulk ferroelectricity and surface electrochemistry in a 30-nanometer-thick film of barium titanate.
An Oak Ridge National Laboratory–led team discovered a link between electrochemistry at the surface and ferroelectricity within the bulk material of ultrathin crystalline films. The findings, published in Nature Physics, explain a decade of anomalous thin-film behavior observations an...
Momentum Technologies has licensed Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s 3D-printed magnet technology and plans to produce the first 3D-printed magnet made from recycled materials for use in electric vehicles, wind turbines and high-speed rail.

Dallas-based Momentum Technologies has non-exclusively licensed Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s 3D-printed magnet technology and plans to commercialize the first 3D-printed magnet made from recycled materials. ORNL has demonstrated that 3D-printed magnets can outperform those created ...