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Popular wisdom holds tall, fast-growing trees are best for biomass, but new research by two U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories reveals that is only part of the equation.

For over half a century, Robert Compton has been a celebrated experimentalist and inspirational leader and teacher in the fields of physics and chemistry. Compton came to work at ORNL's Health Sciences Research Division in 1965 after receiving his doctorate in physics from the University of Tennessee.

Rufus Ritchie came from Kentucky coal country, a region not known for producing physicists.

Herb Mook was a driving force in ORNL neutron s​cience ​for four decades, a prolific and pioneering experimentalist, and a leader and mentor for generations of neutron scattering scientists. 

Systems biologist Paul Abraham uses his fascination with proteins, the molecular machines of nature, to explore new ways to engineer more productive ecosystems and hardier bioenergy crops.

A team led by ORNL created a computational model of the proteins responsible for the transformation of mercury to toxic methylmercury, marking a step forward in understanding how the reaction occurs and how mercury cycles through the environment.

In the search to create materials that can withstand extreme radiation, Yanwen Zhang, a researcher at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, says that materials scientists must think outside the box.

While some of her earth system modeling colleagues at ORNL face challenges such as processor allocation or debugging code, Verity Salmon prepares for mosquito swarms and the possibility of grizzly bears.

In the Physics Division of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, James (“Mitch”) Allmond conducts experiments and uses theoretical models to advance our understanding of the structure of atomic nuclei, which are made of various combinations of protons and neutrons (nucleons).

Sometimes conducting big science means discovering a species not much larger than a grain of sand.