Canan Karakaya, a R&D Staff member in the Chemical Process Scale-Up group at ORNL, was inspired to become a chemical engineer after she experienced a magical transformation that turned ammonia gas into ammonium nitrate, turning a liquid into white flakes gently floating through the air.
Ilenne Del Valle is merging her expertise in synthetic biology and environmental science to develop new technologies to help scientists better understand and engineer ecosystems for climate resilience.
“Three-Dimensional Breast Cancer Spheroids” submitted by radiotherapeutics researcher Debjani Pal is stunning. Brilliant blue dots pop from an electric sphere threaded with bright colors: greens, aqua, hot pink and red.
Raina Setzer knows the work she does matters. That’s because she’s already seen it from the other side. Setzer, a radiochemical processing technician in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Isotope Processing and Manufacturing Division, joined the lab in June 2023.
It was reading about current nuclear discoveries in textbooks that first made Ken Engle want to work at a national lab. It was seeing the real-world impact of the isotopes produced at ORNL
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.
Spanning no less than three disciplines, Marie Kurz’s title — hydrogeochemist — already gives you a sense of the collaborative, interdisciplinary nature of her research at ORNL.
Carrie Eckert applies her skills as a synthetic biologist at ORNL to turn microorganisms into tiny factories that produce a variety of valuable fuels, chemicals and materials for the growing bioeconomy.