In the search for ways to fight methylmercury in global waterways, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory discovered that some forms of phytoplankton are good at degrading the potent neurotoxin.
Mirko Musa spent his childhood zigzagging his bike along the Po River. The Po, Italy’s longest river, cuts through a lush valley of grain and vegetable fields, which look like a green and gold ocean spreading out from the river’s banks.
Growing up exploring the parklands of India where Rudyard Kipling drew inspiration for The Jungle Book left Saubhagya Rathore with a deep respect and curiosity about the natural world. He later turned that interest into a career in environmental science and engineering, and today he is working at ORNL to improve our understanding of watersheds for better climate prediction and resilience.
When reading the novel Jurassic Park as a teenager, Jerry Parks found the passages about gene sequencing and supercomputers fascinating, but never imagined he might someday pursue such futuristic-sounding science.
Growing up in suburban Upper East Tennessee, Layla Marshall didn’t see a lot of STEM opportunities for children.
“I like encouraging young people to get involved in the kinds of things I’ve been doing in my career,” said Marshall. “I like seeing the students achieve their goals. It’s fun to watch them get excited about learning new things and teaching the robot to do things that they didn’t know it could do until they tried it.”
Marshall herself has a passion for learning new things.
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.
Researchers at ORNL explored radium’s chemistry to advance cancer treatments using ionizing radiation.
Though Nell Barber wasn’t sure what her future held after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, she now uses her interest in human behavior to design systems that leverage machine learning algorithms to identify faces in a crowd.
How an Alvin M. Weinberg Fellow is increasing security for critical infrastructure components
Measuring water quality throughout river networks with precision, speed and at lower cost than traditional methods is now possible with AquaBOT, an aquatic drone developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.