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Environmental Sciences Division Director Eric Pierce presented the organization’s 2023 Distinguished Achievement awards at a December 7 all-hands meeting. From left: Megan Johnson, Michael Jones, Maria Colberg, Rachel Pilla, Eric Pierce, Rocio Uria-Martinez, Gbadebo Oladosu and Paul Leiby. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL Environmental Sciences Division Director Eric Pierce presented the division’s 2023 Distinguished Achievement Awards at the organization’s December all-hands meeting.

Mat Doucet, left, of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Sarah Blair of the National Renewable Energy Lab used neutrons to understand an electrochemical way to produce ammonia

Scientists from Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are turning air into fertilizer without leaving a carbon footprint. Their discovery could deliver a much-needed solution to help meet worldwide carbon-neutral goals by 2050.

From left, Cable-Dunlap, Chi, Smith and Thornton have been named ORNL Corporate Fellows. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Four researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been named ORNL Corporate Fellows in recognition of significant career accomplishments and continued leadership in their scientific fields.

2023 Battelle Distinguished Inventors

Four scientists affiliated with ORNL were named Battelle Distinguished Inventors during the lab’s annual Innovation Awards on Dec. 1 in recognition of being granted 14 or more United States patents.

Conceptual art depicts machine learning finding an ideal material for capacitive energy storage. Its carbon framework (black) has functional groups with oxygen (pink) and nitrogen (turquoise). Credit: Tao Wang/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Guided by machine learning, chemists at ORNL designed a record-setting carbonaceous supercapacitor material that stores four times more energy than the best commercial material.

Researchers used Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer, to simulate a magnesium system of nearly 75,000 atoms and the National Energy Research Computing Center’s Perlmutter supercomputer to simulate a quasicrystal structure, above, in a ytterbium-cadmium alloy. Credit: Vikram Gavini

Researchers used the world’s first exascale supercomputer to run one of the largest simulations of an alloy ever and achieve near-quantum accuracy.

ORNL researcher Anne Campbell will present a paper in Korea next year on materials support of carbon-free nuclear energy. Credit: Adam Malin, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Anne Campbell, a researcher at ORNL, recently won the Young Leaders Professional Development Award from the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, or TMS, and has been chosen as the first recipient of the Young Leaders International Scholar Program award from TMS and the Korean Institute of Metals and Materials, or KIM.

Michael McGuire received the Director's Award for Outstanding Individual Accomplishment in Science and Technology at the 2023 Awards Night. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Michael McGuire’s recognition as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's top scientist headlined the annual awards. ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer also presented Director’s Awards to two teams, for operational performance and continuous improvement, and to the night’s science communicator awardee

The OpeN-AM experimental platform, installed at the VULCAN instrument at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source, features a robotic arm that prints layers of molten metal to create complex shapes. This allows scientists to study 3D printed welds microscopically. Credit: Jill Hemman, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

Using neutrons to see the additive manufacturing process at the atomic level, scientists have shown that they can measure strain in a material as it evolves and track how atoms move in response to stress.

The image conceptualizes the processing, structure and mechanical behavior of glassy ion conductors for solid state lithium batteries. Credit: Adam Malin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

As current courses through a battery, its materials erode over time. Mechanical influences such as stress and strain affect this trajectory, although their impacts on battery efficacy and longevity are not fully understood.