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Verónica Melesse Vergara speaks with third and fourth graders at East Side Intermediate School in Brownsville. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Twenty-seven ORNL researchers Zoomed into 11 middle schools across Tennessee during the annual Engineers Week in February. East Tennessee schools throughout Oak Ridge and Roane, Sevier, Blount and Loudon counties participated, with three West Tennessee schools joining in.

The ORNL National Center for Computational Sciences is now home two Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, Cray EX supercomputers that will provide the U.S. Army and Air Force with global and regional numerical weather model outputs for planning and executing missions worldwide. Credit: Jason Smith/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy and HPE Cray

The U.S. Air Force and Oak Ridge National Laboratory launched a new high-performance weather forecasting computer system that will provide a platform for some of the most advanced weather modeling in the world.

Associate Laboratory Director Kathy McCarthy heads the ORNL directorate that manages proto-MPEX, a linear plasma device that informs the development of the MPEX tool for study of fusion materials. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

From the helm of a one-of-a-kind organization that brings nuclear fusion and fission expertise together to pave the way to expanding carbon-free energy, Kathy McCarthy can trace the first step of her engineering career back to

Oscar Martinez loads a special form capsule into the leak tester for a helium leak test in the packaging facility of the National Transportation Research Center. Credit: Jason Richards/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

As program manager for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Package Testing Program, Oscar Martinez enjoys finding and fixing technical issues.

INFUSE logo

The INFUSE fusion program announced a second round of 2020 public-private partnership awards to accelerate fusion energy development.

A Co-Optima research team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Jim Szybist in collaboration with Argonne, Sandia and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, created a merit function tool that evaluates six fuel properties and their impact on engine performance, giving the scientific community a guide to quickly evaluate biofuels. Credit: ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

As ORNL’s fuel properties technical lead for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Co-Optimization of Fuel and Engines, or Co-Optima, initiative, Jim Szybist has been on a quest for the past few years to identify the most significant indicators for predicting how a fuel will perform in engines designed for light-duty vehicles such as passenger cars and pickup trucks.

Frontier supercomputer

A multi-institutional team, led by a group of investigators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been studying various SARS-CoV-2 protein targets, including the virus’s main protease. The feat has earned the team a finalist nomination for the Association of Computing Machinery, or ACM, Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research.

Chuck Kessel

Chuck Kessel was still in high school when he saw a scientist hold up a tiny vial of water and say, “This could fuel a house for a whole year.”

Suman Debnath is using simulation algorithms to accelerate understanding of the modern power grid and enhance its reliability and resilience. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Planning for a digitized, sustainable smart power grid is a challenge to which Suman Debnath is using not only his own applied mathematics expertise, but also the wider communal knowledge made possible by his revival of a local chapter of the IEEE professional society.

MPEX ribbon cutting

Department of Energy Under Secretary for Science Paul Dabbar joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory leaders for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark progress toward a next-generation fusion materials project.