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Creating energy the way the sun and stars do — through nuclear fusion — is one of the grand challenges facing science and technology. What’s easy for the sun and its billions of relatives turns out to be particularly difficult on Earth.

CFM’s RISE open fan engine architecture. Image: GE Aerospace

To support the development of a revolutionary new open fan engine architecture for the future of flight, GE Aerospace has run simulations using the world’s fastest supercomputer capable of crunching data in excess of exascale speed, or more than a quintillion calculations per second.

The Fuel Pellet Fueling Laboratory at ORNL is part of a suite of fusion energy R&D capabilities and provides test equipment and related diagnostics for carrying out experiments to develop pellet injectors for plasma fueling applications. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL will team up with six of eight companies that are advancing designs and research and development for fusion power plants with the mission to achieve a pilot-scale demonstration of fusion within a decade.

Exascale Computing Project

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Lori Diachin will take over as director of the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project on June 1, guiding the successful, multi-institutional high-performance computing effort through its final stages.

Ashley Barker. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL

At the National Center for Computational Sciences, Ashley Barker enjoys one of the least complicated–sounding job titles at ORNL: section head of operations. But within that seemingly ordinary designation lurks a multitude of demanding roles as she oversees the complete user experience for NCCS computer systems.

Researchers Melissa Cregger, left, and Xiaohan Yang examine plants in an ORNL greenhouse where biosensors are installed to accelerate plant transformations. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

Nature-based solutions are an effective tool to combat climate change triggered by rising carbon emissions, whether it’s by clearing the skies with bio-based aviation fuels or boosting natural carbon sinks.

Steven Hamilton. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL.

As renewable sources of energy such as wind and sun power are being increasingly added to the country’s electrical grid, old-fashioned nuclear energy is also being primed for a resurgence.

Colleen Iversen is the new director of NGEE Arctic, leading a large cross-disciplinary team of scientists in pursuit of a better understanding of Arctic climate processes. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Colleen Iversen, ecosystem ecologist, group leader and distinguished staff scientist, has been named director of the Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments Arctic, or NGEE Arctic, a multi-institutional project studying permafrost thaw and other climate-related processes in Alaska.

This image depicts a visualization of an outflow of galactic wind at a single point in time using Cholla. Credit: Evan Schneider/University of Pittsburgh

A trio of new and improved cosmological simulation codes was unveiled in a series of presentations at the annual April Meeting of the American Physical Society in Minneapolis.

ORNL scientists mutated amino acids in a receptor protein, shown in green, which diminished interaction with the SARS-CoV-2 virus spike protein, shown in red. Mutating the receptor protein hampered the virus’s ability to infect host cells. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists exploring bioenergy plant genetics have made a surprising discovery: a protein domain that could lead to new COVID-19 treatments.