Feature Articles

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 1-Jul-2025 11:10 ET (1-Jul-2025 15:10 GMT/UTC)

Berkeley Lab mobilizes to predict how Caldor fire may lead to floods and land movement

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

After the Caldor Fire erupted in August 2021, scientists from Berkeley Lab launched a research project to study how the fire would affect the mountain ecosystem, including factors such as streamflow, groundwater levels, water quality, and possible soil erosion leading to floods and debris flow. They mobilized to burn areas to collect samples of water, sediment, and ash.

The Advanced Quantum Testbed propels quantum information technologies and talent

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Since its foundation, the collaborative research culture of AQT at Berkeley Lab has incorporated scientists from different backgrounds and fields to advance quantum computing. David I. Santiago, AQT's technical lead, shared his perspectives about this fast-growing field and his journey growing up and studying physics in Puerto Rico.

Research team unlocks secret path to a quantum future

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Researchers from the Lab’s Center for Novel Pathways to Quantum Coherence in Materials are developing new pathways to create and protect quantum coherence. Doing so will enable exquisitely sensitive measurement and information processing devices that function at ambient or even extreme conditions.

Journal: Nature

Hydrogen can play key role in US decarbonization

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A Q&A with Berkeley Lab scientists on how hydrogen can help achieve net-zero emissions. Adam Weber is Berkeley Lab's Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Program Manager and leads Berkeley Lab’s Energy Conversion Group (ECG), and Ahmet Kusoglu is a staff scientist in the ECG, a multidisciplinary team of electrochemists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, theorists, and material scientists with active collaborations across industry, academia, and national laboratories.

Cell ‘fingerprinting’ could yield long-awaited alzheimer’s disease diagnostic

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Some devastating diseases, like Alzheimer's and autoimmune conditions, are hard to diagnose correctly because doctors don’t yet know what genes or molecules to look for. But this new technique inspired by the Star Trek tricorder can spot disease without the clues, using infrared light and machine learning.

Journal: Scientific Reports

What if we could give viruses a one-two punch?

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Researchers at Stanford and Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry have developed virus-killing molecules called peptoids. The technology could make possible an emerging category of antiviral drugs that could treat everything from herpes and COVID-19 to the common cold.

Project Jupyter: A computer code that transformed science

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A computer code (Project Jupyter) co-developed by Berkeley Lab's Fernando Perez and embraced by the global science community over two decades has been hailed by Nature Magazine as one of "ten computer codes that transformed science."

CIGAR 'smokes out' attacks on solar electrical power equipment

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

While the need for security in the power grid is clear, cybersecurity has typically been "bolted on" after the fact rather than designed in from the outset. Enter the Cybersecurity via Inverter-Grid Automatic Reconfiguration (CIGAR) project, designed to provide security protections for emerging power systems.

Berkeley Lab deploys next-gen supercomputer, perlmutter, bolstering US scientific research

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

On May 27, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Berkeley Lab unveiled its next-generation supercomputer, Perlmutter, named in honor of the Lab's Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter. The new system will play a key role in advancing scientific research in the U.S. and is front and center in a number of critical technologies, including advanced computing, artificial intelligence, and data science.

Limit global warming to 1.5°C and halve the land ice contribution to sea level this century

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

A new study predicts that sea-level rise could be halved this century (from today to 2100) if we meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. This work combines nearly 900 simulations, including some of Berkeley Lab Computational Scientist Dan Martin's BISICLES models of Antarctic ice sheets.

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