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
Having passed the midpoint of his career, physicist Mali Balasubramanian was part of a tight-knit team at a premier research facility for X-ray spectroscopy. But then another position opened, at ORNL— one that would take him in a new direction.
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.
Andrew Ullman, Distinguished Staff Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is using chemistry to devise a better battery
Andrea Delgado is looking for elementary particles that seem so abstract, there appears to be no obvious short-term benefit to her research.
Chemist Jeff Foster is looking for ways to control sequencing in polymers that could result in designer molecules to benefit a variety of industries, including medicine and energy.
Alice Perrin is passionate about scientific research, but also beans — as in legumes.
When Addis Fuhr was growing up in Bakersfield, California, he enjoyed visiting the mall to gaze at crystals and rocks in the gem store.
Materials scientist Denise Antunes da Silva researches ways to reduce concrete’s embodied carbon in the Sustainable Building Materials Laboratory at ORNL, a research space dedicated to studying environmentally friendly building materials. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy