Features

Interns at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory investigated door access control systems to see if the controller could be manipulated to open or close without proper permissions. 

Researchers used the Summit supercomputer at ORNL to answer one of fission’s big questions: What exactly happens during the nucleus’s “neck rupture” as it splits in two? Scission neutrons have been theorized to be among those particles emitted during neck rupture, although their exact characteristics have been debated due to a lack of conclusive experimental evidence of their existence.

Two papers led by researchers from ORNL received “Editor’s Choice” awards from the journal Future Generation Computer Systems. Both papers explored the possibilities of integrating quantum computing with high performance computing.

ORNL researcher Corey Cooke investigates challenges in radar, digital signal processing and communications systems while serving as a joint faculty member at Tennessee Tech, teaching online courses and advising graduate students to create a pipeline for new researchers to the lab and support the growth of current staff.

Researchers led by the University of Melbourne, Australia, have been nominated for the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Gordon Bell Prize in supercomputing for conducting a quantum molecular dynamics simulation 1,000 times greater in size and speed than any previous simulation of its kind.

ORNL and NASA co-hosted the fourth iteration of this invitation-only event, which brings together geospatial, computational, data and engineering experts around a theme. This year’s gathering focused on how artificial intelligence foundation models can enable geospatial digital twins. 

Researchers from ORNL have taken a major step forward in using quantum mechanics to enhance sensing devices, a new advancement that could be used in a wide range of areas, including materials characterization, improved imaging and biological and medical applications.

Biochemist David Baker — just announced as a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry — turned to the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for information he couldn’t get anywhere else. HFIR is the strongest reactor-based neutron source in the United States.  

ORNL’s Traveling Science Fair celebrated its revitalized return after a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, welcoming over 500 local fifth-grade students from underserved areas. The lab partnered with the general aviation airport, located just across the river from downtown Knoxville, to highlight its connection to aviation science. 

To bridge the gap between experimental facilities and supercomputers, experts from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are teaming up with other DOE national laboratories to build a new data streaming pipeline. The pipeline will allow researchers to send their data to the nation’s leading computing centers for analysis in real time even as their experiments are taking place.