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Steve Nolan, left, who manages many ORNL facilities for United Cleanup Oak Ridge, and Carl Dukes worked closely together to accommodate bringing members of the public into the Oak Ridge Reservation to collect distant images from overhead for the BRIAR biometric recognition project. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Carl Dukes’ career as an adept communicator got off to a slow start: He was about 5 years old when he spoke for the first time. “I’ve been making up for lost time ever since,” joked Dukes, a technical professional at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory probed the chemistry of radium to gain key insights on advancing cancer treatments using radiation therapy. Credit: Adam Malin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Researchers at ORNL explored radium’s chemistry to advance cancer treatments using ionizing radiation.

ORNL researchers worked with partners at the Colorado School of Mines and Baylor University to develop a new process optimization and control method for a closed-circuit reverse osmosis desalination system. The work is intended to support fully automated, decentralized water treatment plants. Credit: Andrew Sproles/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists worked with the Colorado School of Mines and Baylor University to develop and test control methods for autonomous water treatment plants that use less energy and generate less waste.

A 3D printed thermal protection shield, produced by ORNL researchers for NASA, is part of a cargo spacecraft bound for the International Space Station. The shield was printed at the Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL. Credit: ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

A research team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have 3D printed a thermal protection shield, or TPS, for a capsule that will launch with the Cygnus cargo spacecraft as part of the supply mission to the International Space Station.

Urban climate modeling

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have identified a statistical relationship between the growth of cities and the spread of paved surfaces like roads and sidewalks. These impervious surfaces impede the flow of water into the ground, affecting the water cycle and, by extension, the climate.

An X-ray CT image of a 3D-printed metal turbine blade was reconstructed using ORNL’s neural network and advanced algorithms. Credit: Amir Ziabari/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Algorithms developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory can greatly enhance X-ray computed tomography images of 3D-printed metal parts, resulting in more accurate, faster scans.

Cars and coronavirus

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a machine learning model that could help predict the impact pandemics such as COVID-19 have on fuel demand in the United States.

Map with focus on sub-saharan Africa

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a method that uses machine learning to predict seasonal fire risk in Africa, where half of the world’s wildfire-related carbon emissions originate.

Computational biophysicist Ada Sedova is using experiments and high-performance computing to explore the properties of biological systems and predict their form and function, including research to accelerate drug discovery for COVID-19. Photo credit: Jason Richards, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

Ada Sedova’s journey to Oak Ridge National Laboratory has taken her on the path from pre-med studies in college to an accelerated graduate career in mathematics and biophysics and now to the intersection of computational science and biology

Costas Tsouris portrait

While Tsouris’ water research is diverse in scope, its fundamentals are based on basic science principles that remain largely unchanged, particularly in a mature field like chemical engineering.