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Sheng Dai innovates chemical separations, nanomaterials synthesis, and catalytic interfaces for energy applications at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is the lab’s most prolific author.
Sheng Dai, the most prolific author ever at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, had no intention of pursuing a career in science as a young man; he wanted to paint instead. But he couldn’t help noticing that the stones artists carved with their initials and ...
Leah Broussard leads a study of neutron decay to understand correlations between electrons and antineutrinos as well as subtle distortions in the electron energy spectrum.

Leah Broussard, a physicist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has so much fun exploring the neutron that she alternates between calling it her “laboratory” and “playground” for understanding the universe. “The neutron is special,” she said of the sub...

Sergei Kalinin, director of the Institute for Functional Imaging of Materials at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, convenes experts in microscopy and computing to gain scientific insights that will inform design of advanced materials for energy and informati

Sergei Kalinin of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory knows that seeing something is not the same as understanding it. As director of ORNL’s Institute for Functional Imaging of Materials, he convenes experts in microscopy and computing to gain scientific insigh...

Lauren Garrison

The materials inside a fusion reactor must withstand one of the most extreme environments in science, with temperatures in the thousands of degrees Celsius and a constant bombardment of neutron radiation and deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen, from the volatile plasma at th...

Chemist Zili Wu makes discoveries about catalysts using a suite of sophisticated tools, such as this adsorption microcalorimeter to probe catalytic sites. Image credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Carlos Jones

Zili Wu of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory grew up on a farm in China’s heartland. He chose to leave it to catalyze a career in chemistry. Today Wu leads ORNL’s Surface Chemistry and Catalysis group and conducts research at the Center for Nanophase Materials ...