News Releases

This year, the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility celebrates the 40th anniversary of its founding to probe the secrets of the subatomic universe. And for 39 of those years, esteemed physicist Volker D. Burkert has been an important part of its mission. Now, Burkert is being honored for his contributions to advancements in experimental physics with the prestigious Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics. The citation reads: “For exemplary leadership in the development of high-performance instrumentation for large acceptance spectrometers that have enabled breakthroughs in fundamental nuclear physics through electroproduction measurements of exclusive processes."

For decades, Sandia National Laboratories’ National Solar Thermal Test Facility has harnessed the power of the sun to expose aerospace materials to intense heat, replicating the harsh conditions of faster-than-sound flight and atmospheric reentry to ensure the materials’ ability to protect the rest of the vehicle. The most recent of these tests is in support of two exciting NASA missions.

 Radiation therapy techniques have been used for more than a century to treat cancers. Physicists in the Radiation Detector and Imaging group and associated with the Biomedical Research & Innovation Center (BRIC) at Jefferson Lab are launching a study into how best to advance safer types of radiation therapy. BRIC scientists plan to evaluate the ability of accelerator-based proton therapy to replace radioactive isotope-derived treatments.

PPPL researchers have made a significant advancement in understanding the underlying heating mechanism of the sun’s atmosphere, finding that reflected plasma waves could drive the heating of coronal holes.

Researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory were recently honored with a prestigious ACE Award for Composites Excellence by the American Composites Manufacturers Association. The team won the “innovation in green composites design” prize for creating a fully recyclable, lightweight wind turbine blade tip that incorporates low-cost carbon fiber and conductive coating for enhanced protection against lightning strikes. 

A research team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has devised a unique method to observe changes in materials at the atomic level. The technique opens new avenues for understanding and developing advanced materials for quantum computing and electronics.

New artificial intelligence models for plasma heating can do more than was previously thought possible, not only increasing the prediction speed 10 million times while preserving accuracy but also correctly predicting plasma heating in cases where the original numerical code failed.