Feature Articles

ORNL’s electromagnetic isotope separator, or EMIS, made history in 2018 when it produced 500 milligrams of the rare isotope ruthenium-96, unavailable anywhere else in the world. And EMIS technology just keeps getting better, said Brian Egle, who heads the Enrichment Science and Engineering Division’s Stable Isotope Research, Development and Production Section. “It’s capable of, essentially, separating the whole periodic table,” he said.

Tomonori Saito, a distinguished innovator in the field of polymer science and senior R&D staff member at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was honored on May 11 in Columbus, Ohio, at Battelle’s Celebration of Solvers.

Nonfood, plant-based biofuels have potential as a green alternative to fossil fuels, but the enzymes required for production are too inefficient and costly to produce. However, new research is shining a light on enzymes from fungi that could make biofuels economically viable.

Inspired by one of the mysteries of human perception, an ORNL researcher invented a new way to hide sensitive electric grid information from cyberattack: Within a constantly-changing color palette.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory leadership and staff gathered at the lab’s main campus in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on April 27 to dedicate a renovated International Hall of flags and unveil new displays reflecting the lab’s rich 80-year history.

Profile of Yue Yuan, Weinberg Distinguished Staff Fellow at ORNL, who is researching ways to create new materials to help the environment.

Using disinformation to create political instability and battlefield confusion dates back millennia. However, today’s disinformation actors use social media to amplify disinformation that users knowingly or, more often, unknowingly perpetuate. Such disinformation spreads quickly, threatening public health and safety. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic and recent global elections have given the world a front-row seat to this form of modern warfare. A group at ORNL now studies such threats thanks to the evolution at the lab of location intelligence, or research that uses open data to understand places and the factors that influence human activity in them. In the past, location intelligence has informed emergency response, urban planning, transportation planning, energy conservation and policy decisions. Now, location intelligence at ORNL also helps identify disinformation, or shared information that is intentionally misleading, and its impacts.

As a Distinguished Staff Fellow in the Chemical Sciences Division focused on energy storage and conversion, Andrew Ullman of Oak Ridge National Laboratory is using chemistry to devise a better battery.

Andrea Delgado, a Eugene P. Wigner Fellow at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is using quantum computing to help investigate the fundamental building blocks of the universe and to see whether there are particles yet to be found.

NASA scientists are using neutrons at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to study moon rocks collected from the Apollo space missions. The samples are made of dust and rock fragments that combined and struck the moon's surface possibly billions of years ago. As plans to travel to Mars progress, insights into the rocks could reveal more about the formation of the solar system and where water might be found on the moon.