News Releases

The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences have recognized chemical engineer Juan Jimenez as a Finalist in the 2024 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists. Jimenez’s catalysis science research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory opens doors for turning climate change-driving gases into industrially useful materials.

Anibal Boscoboinik, a materials scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has been named an “Inventor of the Year” by Battelle Memorial Institute for his work on noble gas trapping technology with applications in industry and environmental health.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborating institutions have engineered a highly selective catalyst that can convert methane, a major component of natural gas, into methanol, an easily transportable liquid fuel, in a single, one-step reaction. As described in a paper just published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, this direct process for methane-to-methanol conversion runs at a temperature lower than required to make tea and exclusively produces methanol without additional byproducts.

Scientists studying the tracks of particles streaming from six billion collisions of atomic nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) — an “atom smasher” that recreates the conditions of the early universe — have discovered a new kind of antimatter nucleus, the heaviest ever detected. Composed of four antimatter particles — an antiproton, two antineutrons, and one antihyperon — these exotic antinuclei are known as antihyperhydrogen-4.

A team of scientists led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was recently able to observe how promethium forms chemical bonds when placed in an aqueous solution.

Physicist Mary Bishai of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has been named a 2024 DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellow. The honor recognizes her “enduring contributions at the intensity frontier of high energy physics in unraveling fundamental properties of neutrinos, extraordinary leadership and service to the particle physics community, and deep commitment to broadening participation through mentoring next generation scientists.”

Xiao-Qing Yang, a physicist who leads the Electrochemical Energy Storage group within the Chemistry Division at Brookhaven National Laboratory, has spent a good deal of his professional career studying the intricate details of how batteries work -- and stop working. DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) recently recognized his contributions with a Distinguished Achievement Award.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have created the first-ever atomic movies showing how atoms rearrange locally within a quantum material as it transitions from an insulator to a metal. With the help of these movies, the researchers discovered a new material phase that settles a yearslong scientific debate and could facilitate the design of new transitioning materials with commercial applications.

Scientists use a multimodal approach that combines hard X-ray computed tomography and X-ray fluorescence imaging to see the structure and chemical processes inside of a single cell.

Elke Arenholz, a renowned scientist known for her expertise in magnetic materials and X-ray spectroscopy, scattering, imaging, and instrument development, has been named director of the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), effective August 2024.