Feature Articles

The University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute in February selected a circular bioeconomy project as one of its newest Convergent Research Initiatives for joint research. Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Erin Webb will co-lead the five-year Circular Bioeconomy Systems CRI with UT’s Niki Labbe. Webb is lead for the Bioresource Science and Engineering group and relationship manager for the Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, or BETO, at ORNL. Webb discussed the CRI’s first steps, long-term goals, and how her experience as a first-generation, farm-family college student motivates her work. ­­­­­

Danny Andujar brings the technical skills, work drive and team mindset to fill a variety of roles at Argonne National Laboratory’s Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop Facility.

Today marks the startup of the 24^th run of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. Physicists at RHIC’s two house-sized particle detectors, sPHENIX and STAR, are eagerly awaiting the first collisions in Run 24 of protons speeding in opposite directions around the accelerator’s twin 2.4-mile-circumference rings.

You may have flown a flight simulator in a computer game or at a science museum. Landing without crashing is always the hardest part. But that’s nothing compared to the challenge that engineers are facing to develop a flight simulation of the very large vehicles necessary for humans to explore the surface of Mars. The Red Planet poses innumerable challenges to astronauts, not the least of which is getting there. That’s where the Department of Energy Office of Science’s user facility supercomputers come in. Researchers at DOE’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) are working with NASA engineers and scientists to simulate the process of slowing down a huge spacecraft as it moves towards Mars’ surface.

The Neutron Scattering Society of America, or NSSA, recognized Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Ke An and Ken Herwig as fellows for their outstanding contributions to neutron scattering.

Argonne National Laboratory and RIKEN, leaders in high performance computing in the U.S. and Japan, have established a cooperative relationship in support of artificial intelligence computing projects.

The Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA), recently launched the “You Belong in Quantum Series!” in collaboration with the four other U.S. Department of Energy National QIS Research Centers. The initiative’s January 2024 webinar featured distinguished leaders in the field. The new series highlights QSA’s commitment to preparing the quantum workforce ahead of World Quantum Day on April 14.

João Barata, a physicist in the Nuclear Theory Group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has received a fellowship at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In October 2024, Barata will begin the three-year-long appointment in CERN’s Department of Theoretical Physics.

Amanda Petford-Long, director of the Materials Science division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and an Argonne Distinguished Fellow, was recognized by a preeminent materials science society.