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A small droplet of water is suspended in midair via an electrostatic levitator that lifts charged particles using an electric field that counteracts gravity. Credit: Iowa State University/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

How do you get water to float in midair? With a WAND2, of course. But it’s hardly magic. In fact, it’s a scientific device used by scientists to study matter.

Attendees of SMC23 pose for their annual group photo in downtown Knoxville, TN.

ORNL hosted its annual Smoky Mountains Computational Sciences and Engineering Conference in person for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Director of ORNL’s AI Initiative Prasanna Balaprakash addresses attendees at the Generative AI for ORNL Science Workshop. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory hosted its Smoky Mountains Computational Science and Engineering Conference for the first time in person since the COVID pandemic broke in 2020. The conference, which celebrated its 20th consecutive year, took place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Knoxville, Tenn., in late August.

The DEMAND single crystal diffractometer at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, or HFIR, is the latest neutron instrument at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to be equipped with machine learning-assisted software, called ReTIA. Credit: Jeremy Rumsey/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Neutron experiments can take days to complete, requiring researchers to work long shifts to monitor progress and make necessary adjustments. But thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, experiments can now be done remotely and in half the time.

Clouds of gray smoke in the lower left are funneled northward from wildfires in Western Canada, reaching the edge of the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean. A second path of thick smoke is visible at the top center of the image, emanating from wildfires in the boreal areas of Russia’s Far East, in this image captured on July 13, 2023. Credit: NASA MODIS

Wildfires have shaped the environment for millennia, but they are increasing in frequency, range and intensity in response to a hotter climate. The phenomenon is being incorporated into high-resolution simulations of the Earth’s climate by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with a mission to better understand and predict environmental change.

A study led by ORNL researchers examines the causes behind ordering of cations, the positive ions that help make double perovskite oxides look promising as an energy source. Credit: Getty Images

A study led by researchers at ORNL could uncover new ways to produce more powerful, longer-lasting batteries and memory devices.

NASA scientist Andrew Needham used the MARS neutron imaging instrument at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to study moon rock samples brought back from the Apollo missions. Credit: Jeremy Rumsey/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

How did we get from stardust to where we are today? That’s the question NASA scientist Andrew Needham has pondered his entire career.

Frontier supercomputer

A multi-institutional team, led by a group of investigators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been studying various SARS-CoV-2 protein targets, including the virus’s main protease. The feat has earned the team a finalist nomination for the Association of Computing Machinery, or ACM, Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research.

Enzyme activity during organophosphate poisoning

Pick your poison. It can be deadly for good reasons such as protecting crops from harmful insects or fighting parasite infection as medicine — or for evil as a weapon for bioterrorism. Or, in extremely diluted amounts, it can be used to enhance beauty.

The hybrid inverter developed by ORNL is an intelligent power electronic inverter platform that can connect locally sited energy resources such as solar panels, energy storage and electric vehicles and interact efficiently with the utility power grid. Credit: Carlos Jones, ORNL/U.S. Dept of Energy.

ORNL researchers have developed an intelligent power electronic inverter platform that can connect locally sited energy resources such as solar panels, energy storage and electric vehicles and smoothly interact with the utility power grid.