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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.

Ariel view of the Salt Waste Processing Facility, which is big, white and square.

A team of federal contractor and national laboratory engineers and scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management has been nationally distinguished as “Heroes of Chemistry” for making the world better through their effort, ingenuity, creativity and perseverance.

Dmytro Bykov, left, and Hector Corzo participate in a value proposition development exercise as part Energy I-Corps

Two ORNL teams recently completed Cohort 18 of Energy I-Corps, an immersive two-month training program where the scientists define their technology’s value propositions, conduct stakeholder discovery interviews and develop viable market pathways.

Researcher Brittany Rodriguez works with an ORNL-developed Additive Manufacturing/Compression Molding system that 3D prints large-scale, high-volume parts made from lightweight composites. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Brittany Rodriguez never imagined she would pursue a science career at a Department of Energy national laboratory. However, after some encouraging words from her mother, input from key mentors at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, or UTRGV, and a lot of hard work, Rodriguez landed at DOE’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, or MDF, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

This is an image of a man sitting at a computer with three screens.

Researchers conduct largest, most accurate molecular dynamics simulations to date of two million correlated electrons using Frontier, the world’s fastest supercomputer. The simulation, which exceed an exaflop using full double precision, is 1,000 times greater in size and speed than any quantum chemistry simulation of it's kind.

Honors & Awards in white with a green background with an oak leaf underneath

ORNL's Guang Yang and Andrew Westover have been selected to join the first cohort of DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy Inspiring Generations of New Innovators to Impact Technologies in Energy 2024 program. The program supports early career scientists and engineers in their work to convert disruptive ideas into impactful energy technologies. 

Rectangular box being lifted by a red pully system up the left side of the building

Researchers at ORNL and the University of Maine have designed and 3D-printed a single-piece, recyclable natural-material floor panel tested to be strong enough to replace construction materials like steel. 

Frankie White, male in a black suite with a white shirt, is standing crossing his arms.

Early career scientist Frankie White's was part of two major isotope projects at the same time he was preparing to be a father. As co-lead on a team that achieved the first synthesis and characterization of a radium compound using single crystal X-ray diffraction and part of a team that characterized the properties of promethium, White reflects on the life-changing timeline at work, and at home. 

Man in blue shirt and grey pants holds laptop and poses next to a green plant in a lab.

John Lagergren, a staff scientist in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Plant Systems Biology group, is using his expertise in applied math and machine learning to develop neural networks to quickly analyze the vast amounts of data on plant traits amassed at ORNL’s Advanced Plant Phenotyping Laboratory.