Feature Articles

Check out the second of a two-part series exploring how artificial intelligence helps researchers from around the world perform cutting-edge science with the lab’s state-of-the-art facilities and instruments. In this part you’ll learn how AI is playing a key role in helping SLAC researchers find new galaxies and tiny neutrinos, and discover new drugs.

Check out the first of a two-part series exploring how artificial intelligence helps researchers from around the world perform cutting-edge science with the lab’s state-of-the-art facilities and instruments. In this part you’ll learn how SLAC researchers collaborate to develop AI tools to make molecular movies, speeding up the discovery process in the era of big data.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has given the green light for construction to begin on a high-energy upgrade that will further boost the performance of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the world’s most powerful X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) at the DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. When complete, the upgrade will allow scientists to explore atomic-scale processes with unprecedented precision and address fundamental questions in energy storage, catalysis, biology, materials science and quantum physics like never before.

Following ignition demonstrations at the National Ignition Facility, the prospect of developing a fusion energy source using lasers looks brighter than ever. Here, SLAC experts weigh in on what it will take to develop the science and technology toward that aim and how the lab and its partners will contribute.

A lot can happen to solar panels that are mounted to a roof – from tree branches casting shade over them to a neighbor’s baseball cracking one.

Now, a solar panel owner can better understand how their system is performing with a new software tool that transforms solar energy data into a clear picture of power generation over time. The tool could make it easier for solar owners to maintain their systems as the years go by, helping them generate more clean electricity for their homes and an electric grid.

The software, called PVInsight, reveals a system’s performance on cloudy days versus sunny days; potential shade impediments, like buildings or vegetation; or more catastrophic changes, like hail pellets damaging panels during a storm. Built by a team of researchers with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Grid Integration Systems and Mobility lab (GISMo) lab, the software is also open source, meaning anyone interested can access it.

What could smaller particle accelerators look like in the future? SLAC scientists are working on innovations that could give more researchers access to accelerator science.