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Ethan Coon uses math and computational science to model the flow of above and belowground water in watersheds.

As a computational hydrologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Ethan Coon combines his talent for math with his love of coding to solve big science questions about water quality, water availability for energy production, climate change, and the

Laccaria bicolor is fruiting aboveground and colonizing the Populus deltoides plant root system belowground in a greenhouse setting.

A team of scientists led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered the specific gene that controls an important symbiotic relationship between plants and soil fungi, and successfully facilitated the symbiosis in a plant that

Amber McBride is using her expertise in nanotechnology, drug delivery, and disease models to research fundamental challenges in human health in the ORNL Biosciences Division. Photographed by Carlos Jones, ORNL.

Amber McBride is using her expertise in nanotechnology, drug delivery, and disease models to research fundamental challenges in human health in the ORNL Biosciences Division. 

David Weston

David Weston became fascinated with plant genetics and ecology in college, and now with the support provided by the DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program, he will link those fields as he studies plant-microbe symbiosis. The research will focus on sphagnum moss, a dominant plant of n...

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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...

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It’s been 10 years since the US Department of Energy first established a BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and researcher Gerald “Jerry” Tuskan has used that time and the lab’s and center’s resources and tools

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Ecologist Virginia Dale is an ORNL corporate fellow and director of the lab’s Center for BioEnergy Sustainability. In her work she focuses on environmental decision making, plant succession, land-use change, landscape ecology, ecological modeling, sustainability, and bioenergy systems. Dale...

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Stan Wullschleger did not intend to stay so long at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but as many other scientists can relate, time flies when you’re engaged in interesting work. “I don’t know if you can tell while it’s happening or you just notice it in hindsight, but the lab is a wonderful place t...

Jiafu Mao

CCSI scientist Jiafu Mao, of the Terrestrial Systems Modeling group in the Environmental Sciences Division, parlayed his interest in physics and mathematics as a student in China into a field of study he has always found interesting