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Oak Ridge National Laboratory has named Troy A. Carter director of the Fusion Energy Division in ORNL’s Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate, or FFESD. 

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a method leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate the identification of environmentally friendly solvents for industrial carbon capture, biomass processing, rechargeable batteries and other applications.

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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. 

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A new study conducted on the Frontier supercomputer gave researchers new clues to improving fusion confinement. This research, in collaboration with General Atomics and UC San Diego, uncovered that the interaction between ions and electrons near the tokamak's edge can unexpectedly increase turbulence, challenging previous assumptions about how to optimize plasma confinement for efficient nuclear fusion.

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Researchers used quantum simulations to obtain new insights into the nature of neutrinos — the mysterious subatomic particles that abound throughout the universe — and their role in the deaths of massive stars.

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Close on the heels of its fourth summer school, the Quantum Science Center, or QSC, hosted its second in-person all-hands meeting in early May. More than 150 scientists, engineers and support staff traveled from 17 institutions to review the QSC’s progress, examine existing priorities and brainstorm new short- and long-term research endeavors. 

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Purdue University hosted more than 100 attendees at the fourth annual Quantum Science Center summer school. Students and early-career members of the QSC —headquartered at ORNL — participated in lectures, hands-on workshops, poster sessions and panel discussions alongside colleagues from other DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Centers. 

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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.

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ORNL scientists develop a sample holder that tumbles powdered photochemical materials within a neutron beamline exposing more of the material to light for increased photo-activation and better photochemistry data capture.

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Researchers set a new benchmark for future experiments making materials in space rather than for space. They discovered that many kinds of glass have similar atomic structure and arrangements and can successfully be made in space. Scientists from nine institutions in government, academia and industry participated in this 5-year study.