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.
Carl Dukes’ career as an adept communicator got off to a slow start: He was about 5 years old when he spoke for the first time. “I’ve been making up for lost time ever since,” joked Dukes, a technical professional at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Researchers at ORNL are developing advanced automation techniques for desalination and water treatment plants, enabling them to save energy while providing affordable drinking water to small, parched communities without high-quality water supplies.
Tom Karnowski and Jordan Johnson of ORNL have been named chair and vice chair, respectively, of the East Tennessee section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE.
Mike Huettel is a cyber technical professional. He also recently completed the 6-month Cyber Warfare Technician course for the United States Army, where he learned technical and tactical proficiency leadership in operations throughout the cyber domain.
Tristen Mullins enjoys the hidden side of computers. As a signals processing engineer for ORNL, she tries to uncover information hidden in components used on the nation’s power grid — information that may be susceptible to cyberattacks.
Inspired by one of the mysteries of human perception, an ORNL researcher invented a new way to hide sensitive electric grid information from cyberattack: within a constantly changing color palette.
The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has formally launched the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII), a $111 million public-private partnership.
The Transformational Challenge Reactor, or TCR, a microreactor built using 3D printing and other new advanced technologies, could be operational by 2024.
From materials science and earth system modeling to quantum information science and cybersecurity, experts in many fields run simulations and conduct experiments to collect the abundance of data necessary for scientific progress.