Within the Department of Energy’s National Transportation Research Center at ORNL’s Hardin Valley Campus, scientists investigate engines designed to help the U.S. pivot to a clean mobility future.
Steven Campbell can often be found deep among tall cases of power electronics, hunkered in his oversized blue lab coat, with 1500 volts of electricity flowing above his head. When interrupted in his laboratory at ORNL, Campbell will usually smile and duck his head.
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.
Climate change often comes down to how it affects water, whether it’s for drinking, electricity generation, or how flooding affects people and infrastructure. To better understand these impacts, ORNL water resources engineer Sudershan Gangrade is integrating knowledge ranging from large-scale climate projections to local meteorology and hydrology and using high-performance computing to create a holistic view of the future.
Gang Seob “GS” Jung has known from the time he was in middle school that he was interested in science.
When Bill Partridge started working with industry partner Cummins in 1997, he was a postdoctoral researcher specializing in applied optical diagnostics and new to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
What’s getting Jim Szybist fired up these days? It’s the opportunity to apply his years of alternative fuel combustion and thermodynamics research to the challenge of cleaning up the hard-to-decarbonize, heavy-duty mobility sector — from airplanes to locomotives to ships and massive farm combines.
Burak Ozpineci started out at ORNL working on a novel project: introducing silicon carbide into power electronics for more efficient electric vehicles. Twenty years later, the car he drives contains those same components.
Having co-developed the power electronics behind ORNL’s compact, high-level wireless power technology for automobiles, Erdem Asa is looking to the skies to apply the same breakthrough to aviation.