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Instantaneous solution quantities shown for a static Mach 1.4 solution on a mesh consisting of 33 billion elements using 33,880 GPUs, or 90% of Frontier.  From left to right, contours show the mass fractions of the hydroxyl radical and H2O, the temperature in Kelvin, and the local Mach number. Credit: Gabriel Nastac/NASA

Since 2019, a team of NASA scientists and their partners have been using NASA’s FUN3D software on supercomputers located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to conduct computational fluid dynamics simulations of a human-scale Mars lander. The team’s ongoing research project is a first step in determining how to safely land a vehicle with humans onboard onto the surface of Mars.

ORNL

Two different teams that included Oak Ridge National Laboratory employees were honored Feb. 20 with Secretary’s Honor Achievement Awards from the Department of Energy. This is DOE's highest form of employee recognition. 

LCDR Rich Harvey, pictured on the left, poses with two colleagues at the 2023 POST Conference. Credit: Rich Harvey

Lieutenant Commander Rich Harvey has spent the last three decades of his career serving his country. Harvey's efforts supporting the Office of Naval Research has earned him the 2023 Junior Scientist Officer of the Year award for coordination and computer modeling support for a project called TALISMAN, his leadership roles and other exemplary service markers. 

A multidirectorate group from ORNL attended AGU23 and came away inspired for the year ahead in geospatial, earth and climate science

ORNL scientists and researchers attended the annual American Geophysical Union meeting and came away inspired for the year ahead in geospatial, earth and climate science. 

Three staff members in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate (FFESD) have moved into newly established roles facilitating communication and program management with sponsors of the directorate’s Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division.

Three staff members in ORNL’s Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate have moved into newly established roles facilitating communication and program management with sponsors of the directorate’s Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division. 

Rigoberto Advincula is a UT-ORNL Governor's Chair and leads the lab's Macromolecular Nanomaterials group. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Rigoberto “Gobet” Advincula, a scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been appointed a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.

ORNL’s Tomás Rush examines a culture as part of his research into the plant-fungus relationship that can help or hinder ecosystem health. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

New computational framework speeds discovery of fungal metabolites, key to plant health and used in drug therapies and for other uses. 
 

Researchers at Corning have found that understanding the stability of the rings of atoms in glass materials can help predict the performance of glass products.

Corning uses neutron scattering to study the stability of different types of glass. Recently, researchers for the company have found that understanding the stability of the rings of atoms in glass materials can help predict the performance of glass products.

Prasanna Balaprakash, who leads ORNL’s AI Initiative, participated in events hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Task Force on American Innovation to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by AI. Credit: Brian Mosley/Computing Research Association

In summer 2023, ORNL's Prasanna Balaprakash was invited to speak at a roundtable discussion focused on the importance of academic artificial intelligence research and development hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

ORNL intern Jack Orebaugh holds the drone used in his research to help locate human remains. Credit: Lena Shoemaker/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Jack Orebaugh, a forensic anthropology major at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has a big heart for families with missing loved ones. When someone disappears in an area of dense vegetation, search and recovery efforts can be difficult, especially when a missing person’s last location is unknown. Recognizing the agony of not knowing what happened to a family or friend, Orebaugh decided to use his internship at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to find better ways to search for lost and deceased people using cameras and drones.