Skip to main content
Jim Szybist, Propulsion Science section head at ORNL, is applying his years of alternative fuel combustion and thermodynamics research to the challenge of cleaning up the hard-to-decarbonize, heavy-duty mobility sector. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

What’s getting Jim Szybist fired up these days? It’s the opportunity to apply his years of alternative fuel combustion and thermodynamics research to the challenge of cleaning up the hard-to-decarbonize, heavy-duty mobility sector — from airplanes to locomotives to ships and massive farm combines.

Earth Day

Tackling the climate crisis and achieving an equitable clean energy future are among the biggest challenges of our time. 

Erdem Asa is leveraging his power electronics expertise to adapt ORNL’s wireless charging technology to unmanned aerial vehicles. Credit: Erdem Asa/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Having co-developed the power electronics behind ORNL’s compact, high-level wireless power technology for automobiles, Erdem Asa is looking to the skies to apply the same breakthrough to aviation.

Hope Corsair. Credit: Carlos Jones, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

When Hope Corsair’s new colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory ask her about her area of expertise, she tells them it’s “context.” Her goal as an energy economist is to make sure ORNL’s breakthroughs have the widest possible

Aviation contributes about 2.5% of global carbon dioxide emissions. To greatly reduce its emissions, the U.S. commercial aviation sector needs new methods of making sustainable aviation fuel. Credit: Ross Parmly/Unsplash 

ORNL’s Zhenglong Li led a team tasked with improving the current technique for converting ethanol to C3+ olefins and demonstrated a unique composite catalyst that upends current practice and drives down costs. The research was published in ACS Catalysis.

Verónica Melesse Vergara speaks with third and fourth graders at East Side Intermediate School in Brownsville. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Twenty-seven ORNL researchers Zoomed into 11 middle schools across Tennessee during the annual Engineers Week in February. East Tennessee schools throughout Oak Ridge and Roane, Sevier, Blount and Loudon counties participated, with three West Tennessee schools joining in.