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Speakers, scientific workshops, speed networking, a student poster showcase and more energized the Annual User Meeting of the Department of Energy’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, or CNMS, Aug. 7-10, near Market Square in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee.

Tom Karnowski and Jordan Johnson of ORNL have been named chair and vice chair, respectively, of the East Tennessee section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE.

Rare isotope oxygen-28 has been determined to be "barely unbound" by experiments led by researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and by computer simulations conducted at ORNL. The findings from this first-ever observation of ²⁸O answer a longstanding question in nuclear physics: can you get bound isotopes in a very neutron-rich region of the nuclear chart, where instability and radioactivity are the norm? 

Madhavi Martin brings a physicist’s tools and perspective to biological and environmental research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, supporting advances in bioenergy, soil carbon storage and environmental monitoring, and even helping solve a murder mystery.

Mike Huettel is a cyber technical professional. He also recently completed the 6-month Cyber Warfare Technician course for the United States Army, where he learned technical and tactical proficiency leadership in operations throughout the cyber domain.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers recently demonstrated use of a laser-based analytical method to accelerate understanding of critical plant and soil properties that affect bioenergy plant growth and soil carbon storage.

Tristen Mullins enjoys the hidden side of computers. As a signals processing engineer for ORNL, she tries to uncover information hidden in components used on the nation’s power grid — information that may be susceptible to cyberattacks.

Creating energy the way the sun and stars do — through nuclear fusion — is one of the grand challenges facing science and technology. What’s easy for the sun and its billions of relatives turns out to be particularly difficult on Earth.

A research team from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories won the first Best Open-Source Contribution Award for its paper at the 37^th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium.

ORNL will team up with six of eight companies that are advancing designs and research and development for fusion power plants with the mission to achieve a pilot-scale demonstration of fusion within a decade.