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Chathuddasie Amarasinghe explains her research poster, “Using Microfluidic Mother Machine Devices to Study the Correlated Dynamics of Ribosomes and Chromosomes in Escherichia Coli.” Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Speakers, scientific workshops, speed networking, a student poster showcase and more energized the Annual User Meeting of the Department of Energy’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, or CNMS, Aug. 7-10, near Market Square in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee.

HFIR

Creating energy the way the sun and stars do — through nuclear fusion — is one of the grand challenges facing science and technology. What’s easy for the sun and its billions of relatives turns out to be particularly difficult on Earth.

The Fuel Pellet Fueling Laboratory at ORNL is part of a suite of fusion energy R&D capabilities and provides test equipment and related diagnostics for carrying out experiments to develop pellet injectors for plasma fueling applications. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL will team up with six of eight companies that are advancing designs and research and development for fusion power plants with the mission to achieve a pilot-scale demonstration of fusion within a decade.

Yue Yuan, Weinberg Distinguished Staff Fellow at ORNL, is researching ways to create new materials to help the environment. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Growing up in China, Yue Yuan stood beneath the world’s largest hydroelectric dam, built to harness the world’s third-longest river. Her father brought her to Three Gorges Dam every year as it was being constructed across the Yangtze River so she could witness its progress.

Larry Allard

Larry Allard, a distinguished research staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a Fellow of the Microanalysis Society.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers used an invertible neural network, a type of artificial intelligence that mimics the human brain, to select the most suitable materials for desired properties, such as flexibility or heat resistance, with high chemical accuracy. The study could lead to more customizable materials design for industry.

A study led by researchers at ORNL could help make materials design as customizable as point-and-click.

This image illustrates lattice distortion, strain, and ion distribution in metal halide perovskites, which can be induced by external stimuli such as light and heat. Image credit: Stephen Jesse/ORNL

A study by researchers at the ORNL takes a fresh look at what could become the first step toward a new generation of solar batteries.

ORNL’s Sergei Kalinin and Rama Vasudevan (foreground) use scanning probe microscopy to study bulk ferroelectricity and surface electrochemistry -- and generate a lot of data. Credit: Jason Richards/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists use artificial intelligence, or AI, to accelerate the discovery and development of materials for energy and information technologies.

Heavy-duty vehicles contribute 23% of transportation emissions of greenhouse gases and account for almost one-quarter of the fuel consumed annually in the U.S. Credit: Chris Bair/Unsplash

Through a consortium of Department of Energy national laboratories, ORNL scientists are applying their expertise to provide solutions that enable the commercialization of emission-free hydrogen fuel cell technology for heavy-duty

Parans Paranthaman, a researcher in the Chemical Sciences Division at ORNL, coordinated research efforts to study the filter efficiency of the N95 material. His published results represent one of the first studies on polypropylene as it relates to COVID-19. Credit: ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Parans Paranthaman suddenly found himself working from home like millions of others.