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Katy Bradford

Katy Bradford is on a mission to revolutionize the construction industry and is the founder of Cassette Construction, a company in the newest cohort of Innovation Crossroads, a DOE Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program node at ORNL. As an Innovation Crossroads fellow, Bradford and her company will receive technical, financial and networking support to successfully advance the company’s products to the marketplace. 

From left, Sedrick Bouknight and Matthias Maiterth of ORNL’s Analytics and AI Methods at Scale group demonstrate the VR capabilities of the Frontier digital twin project's ExaDIGIT framework. Using VR allows Frontier's operators to exam the system's telemetry in a more interactive and intuitive way.

As high-tech companies ramp up construction of massive data centers to meet the business boom in artificial intelligence, one component is becoming an increasingly rare commodity: electricity. Since its formation in 2004, the OLCF has fielded five generations of world-class supercomputing systems that have produced a nearly 2,000 times reduction in energy usage per floating point operation per second, or flops. With decades of experience in making HPC more energy efficient, the OLCF may serve as a resource for best “bang for the buck” practices in a suddenly burgeoning industry.

Wavy photo representing high performance computing

Office of Science to announce a new research and development opportunity led by ORNL to advance technologies and drive new capabilities for future supercomputers. This industry research program worth $23 million, called New Frontiers, will initiate partnerships with multiple companies to accelerate the R&D of critical technologies with renewed emphasis on energy efficiency for the next generation of post-exascale computing in the 2029 and beyond time frame.

Bryan Maldonado

As a mechanical engineer in building envelope materials research at ORNL, Bryan Maldonado sees opportunities to apply his scientific expertise virtually everywhere he goes, from coast to coast. As an expert in understanding how complex systems operate, he’s using machine learning methods to control the process and ultimately optimize performance. 

The Frontier supercomputer simulated magnetic responses inside calcium-48, depicted by red and blue spheres. Insights into the nucleus’s fundamental forces could shed light on supernova dynamics.

Nuclear physicists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently used Frontier, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, to calculate the magnetic properties of calcium-48’s atomic nucleus. 

Joshua New

ORNL’s Joshua New was named the 2024 Researcher of the Year by R&D World magazine as part of its R&D 100 Professional Award winners. 

ORNL researchers demonstrated the use of drones equipped with cameras and other sensors to check power lines at an EPB of Chattanooga training center for electrical line workers.

Researchers at ORNL recently demonstrated an automated drone-inspection technology at EPB of Chattanooga that will allow utilities to more quickly and easily check remote power lines for malfunctions, catching problems before outages occur.

Exploding stars, a glowing light

Scientists have determined that a rare element found in some of the oldest solids in the solar system, such as meteorites, and previously thought to have been forged in supernova explosions, actually predate such cosmic events, challenging long-held theories about its origin.

Angelique Adams, front left, introduces Kusum Rathore, front center, executive director and vice president of the multi-campus office at the University of Tennessee Research Foundation, and Jim Biggs, executive director of the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center, during the final presentation event for ORNL’s Safari coaching program.

Five researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently completed an eight-week pilot commercialization coaching program as part of Safari, a program funded by DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions, or OTT, Practices to Accelerate the Commercialization of Technologies, or PACT. 

Image with a grey and black backdrop - in front is a diamond with two circles coming out from it, showing the insides.

The world’s fastest supercomputer helped researchers simulate synthesizing a material harder and tougher than a diamond — or any other substance on Earth. The study used Frontier to predict the likeliest strategy to synthesize such a material, thought to exist so far only within the interiors of giant exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.