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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.

Mohamad Zineddin

Mohamad Zineddin hopes to establish an interdisciplinary center of excellence for nuclear security at ORNL, combining critical infrastructure assessment and protection, risk mitigation, leadership in nuclear security, education and training, nuclear security culture and resilience strategies and techniques.

ORNL engineer Canan Karakaya uses computational modeling to design and improve chemical reactors and how they are operated to convert methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia or ethanol into higher-value chemicals or energy-dense fuels. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

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. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept of Energy

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. 

Alex May, pictured above, is the first and only full-time data curator at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. Credit: Carlos Jones and Wikimedia Commons, background/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Alex May is the first and only full-time data curator at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, evaluating datasets developed by computational scientists before they are made public through the OLCF’s Constellation portal for open data exchange.
Madhavi Martin portrait image

Madhavi Martin brings a physicist’s tools and perspective to biological and environmental research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, supporting advances in bioenergy, soil carbon storage and environmental monitoring, and even helping solve a murder mystery.

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.

Stephen Dahunsi. Credit: Jason Richards/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Stephen Dahunsi’s desire to see more countries safely deploy nuclear energy is personal. Growing up in Nigeria, he routinely witnessed prolonged electricity blackouts as a result of unreliable energy supplies. It’s a problem he hopes future generations won’t have to experience.

Jack Cahill of ORNL’s Biosciences Division is developing new techniques to view and measure the previously unseen to better understand important chemical processes at play in plant-microbe interactions and in human health. In this photo, Cahill is positioning a rhizosphere-on-a-chip platform for imaging by mass spectrometry. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept of Energy

John “Jack” Cahill is out to illuminate previously unseen processes with new technology, advancing our understanding of how chemicals interact to influence complex systems whether it’s in the human body or in the world beneath our feet.

ORNL physicist Libby Johnson demonstrated a new control panel at ORNL’s Bulk Shielding Facility in 1957. Among the first females to operate a nuclear reactor, Johnson blazed trails for women. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Oak Ridge National Laboratory physicist Elizabeth “Libby” Johnson (1921-1996), one of the world’s first nuclear reactor operators, standardized the field of criticality safety with peers from ORNL and Los Alamos National Laboratory.