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Ashley Barker. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL

At the National Center for Computational Sciences, Ashley Barker enjoys one of the least complicated–sounding job titles at ORNL: section head of operations. But within that seemingly ordinary designation lurks a multitude of demanding roles as she oversees the complete user experience for NCCS computer systems.

Matt Sieger. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Matt Sieger has been named the project director for the OLCF-6 effort. This next OLCF undertaking will plan and build a world-class successor to the OLCF’s still-new exascale system, Frontier.

The Frontier supercomputer at ORNL remains in the number one spot on the May 2023 TOP500 rankings, with an updated high-performance Linpack score of 1.194 exaflops. Engineers at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, which houses Frontier and its predecessor Summit, expect that Frontier’s speeds could ultimately top 1.4 exaflops, or 1.4 quintillion calculations per second. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

With the world’s first exascale supercomputing system now open to full user operations, research teams are harnessing Frontier’s power and speed to tackle some of the most challenging problems in modern science.

Michael Parks

ORNL has named Michael Parks director of the Computer Science and Mathematics Division within ORNL’s Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate. His hiring became effective March 13.

State and Local Economic Development Award

A partnership of ORNL, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee and TVA that aims to attract nuclear energy-related firms to Oak Ridge has been recognized with a state and local economic development award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium.

Paul Langan will oversee ORNL's research directorate focused on biological and environmental systems science. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Paul Langan will join ORNL in the spring as associate laboratory director for the Biological and Environmental Systems Science Directorate.

Michelle Kidder received the lab’s Director’s Award for Outstanding Individual Accomplishment in Science and Technology for her decades-long work mentoring students, teachers and early-career staff. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Laboratory Director Thomas Zacharia presented five Director’s Awards during Saturday night's annual Awards Night event hosted by UT-Battelle, which manages ORNL for the Department of Energy.

Nearly $500 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding will support several key science projects underway at ORNL. Credit: ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

Several significant science and energy projects led by the ORNL will receive a total of $497 million in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act.

Materials scientist Denise Antunes da Silva researches ways to reduce concrete’s embodied carbon in the Sustainable Building Materials Laboratory at ORNL, a research space dedicated to studying environmentally friendly building materials. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Materials scientist Denise Antunes da Silva researches ways to reduce concrete’s embodied carbon in the Sustainable Building Materials Laboratory at ORNL, a research space dedicated to studying environmentally friendly building materials. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

ORNL’s Tomás Rush explores the secret lives of fungi and plants for insights into the interactions that determine plant health. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Tomás Rush began studying the mysteries of fungi in fifth grade and spent his college intern days tromping through forests, swamps and agricultural lands searching for signs of fungal plant pathogens causing disease on host plants.