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Glen and Alice Ellis

Like more than 600 million others worldwide, the Ellis kids wanted to witness the spectacle of the lunar landing. But they had a more personal interest as well: They wanted to see if the astronauts would use a device that—just months earlier—had been a blueprint sprawled across their father’s drawing board at ORNL.

Tom King

ORNL researchers have long been engaged in research to protect the critical infrastructure that generates and delivers electricity. Today the work has a new sense of urgency as grid-focused cyberattacks are on the rise and utilities tackle the challenge of integrating intermittent renewable energy with traditional power plants. 

Ben Ollis

ORNL engineer Ben Ollis has spent the past few years researching grid resilience. Recently, Ollis has led the deployment of a microgrid governed by an ORNL-developed open source controller—called CSEISMIC, for Complete System-level Efficient and Interoperable Solution for Microgrid Integrated Controls—in Alabama Power’s Smart Neighborhood located in Hoover, Alabama.

Marissa Morales Rodriguez

How do you defend the world’s largest machine? This is the question scientists and engineers have faced as the power grid presents an increasingly attractive target for hackers bent on societal disruption.

Jim Ingraham

Ten years into its program to create an automated smart grid supported by an all-fiber-optic communications network, the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, Tennessee, has seen tremendous benefits. Power outages are down by 60 percent, and operational costs have fallen by some $60 million a year for the municipal utility operating in the town nicknamed America’s first Gig City.

Early Oak Ridge

Oak Ridge in its earliest days was a quintessential planned community, and a gated one at that.

Elizabeth Skoropata

We ask some of our young researchers why they chose a career in science, what they are working on at ORNL, and where they would like to go with their careers.