Skip to main content
Man in blue shirt and grey pants holds laptop and poses next to a green plant in a lab.

John Lagergren, a staff scientist in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Plant Systems Biology group, is using his expertise in applied math and machine learning to develop neural networks to quickly analyze the vast amounts of data on plant traits amassed at ORNL’s Advanced Plant Phenotyping Laboratory.

People in a large convention room networking before a presentation

Vanderbilt University and ORNL announced a partnership to develop training, testing and evaluation methods that will accelerate the Department of Defense’s adoption of AI-based systems in operational environments.

Blue background with three rectangles. The first and third silver rectangles are showing the inside metal part of a fridge with small alternating horizontal rectangles going down the side in darker grey/silver.

A technology developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory works to keep food refrigerated with phase change materials, or PCMs, while reducing carbon emissions by 30%.

Photo of glowing, pink diamond-shaped figure. This is illuminated with light, encircled with a wreath of around 70 blue tube-like shapes.

Scientists have uncovered the properties of a rare earth element that was first discovered 80 years ago at the very same laboratory, opening a new pathway for the exploration of elements critical in modern technology, from medicine to space travel.

Jiafu Mao, left, and Yaoping Wang discuss their analysis of urban and rural vegetation resilience across the United States in the EVEREST visualization lab at ORNL. Credit: Carlos Jones, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

Scientists at ORNL completed a study of how well vegetation survived extreme heat events in both urban and rural communities across the country in recent years. The analysis informs pathways for climate mitigation, including ways to reduce the effect of urban heat islands.

New research predicts peak groundwater extraction for key basins around the globe by the year 2050. The map indicates groundwater storage trends for Earth’s 37 largest aquifers using data from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory GRACE satellite. Credit: NASA.

Groundwater withdrawals are expected to peak in about one-third of the world’s basins by 2050, potentially triggering significant trade and agriculture shifts, a new analysis finds. 

As a chemical engineer focusing on low-carbon energy sources like hydrogen, Cheekatamarla’s research at ORNL supports the deployment of clean energy technologies in buildings and industries. Credit: Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Cheekatamarla is a researcher in the Multifunctional Equipment Integration group with previous experience in product deployment. He is researching alternative energy sources such as hydrogen for cookstoves and his research supports the decarbonization of building technologies. 

ORNL researchers developed a long-sequenced AI transformer capable of processing millions of pathology reports to provide experts researching cancer diagnoses and management with more accurate information on cancer reporting.

In partnership with the National Cancer Institute, researchers from ORNL and Louisiana State University developed a long-sequenced AI transformer capable of processing millions of pathology reports to provide experts researching cancer diagnoses and management with exponentially more accurate information on cancer reporting.

Fengqi “Frank” Li brings computational and architectural expertise to building energy modeling in ORNL’s Grid Interactive Controls group. Genevieve Martin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Although he built his career around buildings, Fengqi “Frank” Li likes to break down walls. Li was trained as an architect, but he doesn’t box himself in. Currently he is working as a computational developer at ORNL. But Li considers himself a designer. To him, that’s less a box than a plane – a landscape scattered with ideas, like destinations on a map that can be connected in different ways. 

Anuj Kapadia

Anuj J. Kapadia, who heads the Advanced Computing Methods for Health Sciences Section at ORNL, has been elected as president of the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine.