For many scientists and engineers, the first real test of their mettle comes not in a classroom, but in a lab or the field, where hands-on experience can teach volumes. For Susan Hogle, that hands-on experience just happened to be with material that was too hot to handle—literally....
Richard “Rick” Raines has been on the forefront of protecting critical communications systems from attack since before the term “cyber” was in vogue, and he is bringing that leadership to bear as he takes on the role of director for the Electrical and Electronics Systems Research Division (EESRD) at...
Michelle Baldwin’s engineering work has taken her from the public to the private sector and back again, although it was not certain early in her academic career that she would pursue a technical field at all. Baldwin applies her technical programming expertise to several proj...
Niyanth Sridharan grew up in a family that indulged his questions by using real-world examples to explain scientific concepts. That natural curiosity still drives the materials researcher today as he explores additive manufacturing techniques at the Department of Energy's Oak Ri...
The field of “Big Data” has exploded in the blink of an eye, growing exponentially into almost every branch of science in just a few decades. Sectors such as energy, manufacturing, healthcare and many others depend on scalable data processing and analysis for continued in...
Simulating the global climate in high resolution at multiple scales will help answer questions about future global and regional climates. However, as performance expectations increase for Earth system models, so do computing challenges. Salil Mahajan, a computational climate sci...
Mindy Clark’s enthusiasm for plant biology has only grown from her time in the classroom at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) to her years working in greenhouse operations for private industry and more recently at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory....
Working backwards has moved Josh Michener’s research far forward as he uses evolution and genetics to engineer microbes for better conversion of plants into biofuels and biochemicals. In his work for the BioEnergy Science Center at ORNL, for instance, “we’ve gotten good at engineering microbes th...
Joshua New has an ambitious goal to increase the nation’s efficient use of energy: he wants to create a model of every building in America. All 130 million of them. For now, Joshua and his colleagues in the Building Envelope and Urban Systems group are creating virtual models of the buildings in ...
Tara Pandya’s interest in nuclear engineering began with a literal flash of inspiration.
Pandya originally aspired to become a musician or a music teacher, but grew to love math and physics the more she learned about them. When it came time for college, she wanted to find a progr...