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Howard Wilson and Gary Staebler

Two fusion energy leaders have joined ORNL in the Fusion and Fission Energy and Science Directorate, or FFESD.

INFUSE logo

ORNL is leading three research collaborations with fusion industry partners through the Innovation Network for FUSion Energy, or INFUSE, program that will focus on resolving technical challenges and developing innovative solutions to make practical fusion energy a reality.  

Researchers used Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer, to simulate a magnesium system of nearly 75,000 atoms and the National Energy Research Computing Center’s Perlmutter supercomputer to simulate a quasicrystal structure, above, in a ytterbium-cadmium alloy. Credit: Vikram Gavini

Researchers used the world’s first exascale supercomputer to run one of the largest simulations of an alloy ever and achieve near-quantum accuracy.

Frontier’s exascale power enables the Energy, Exascale and Earth System Model-Multiscale Modeling Framework — or E3SM-MMF — project to run years’ worth of climate simulations at unprecedented speed and scale. Credit: Mark Taylor/Sandia National Laboratories, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The world’s first exascale supercomputer will help scientists peer into the future of global climate change and open a window into weather patterns that could affect the world a generation from now.

Logo that reads U.S. Department of Energy INCITE Leadership Computing

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science has allocated supercomputer access to a record-breaking 75 computational science projects for 2024 through its Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment, or INCITE, program. DOE is awarding 60% of the available time on the leadership-class supercomputers at DOE’s Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories to accelerate discovery and innovation. 

ORNL scientists developed a method that improves the accuracy of the CRISPR Cas9 gene editing tool used to modify microbes for renewable fuels and chemicals production. This research draws on the lab’s expertise in quantum biology, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Credit: Philip Gray/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Scientists at ORNL used their expertise in quantum biology, artificial intelligence and bioengineering to improve how CRISPR Cas9 genome editing tools work on organisms like microbes that can be modified to produce renewable fuels and chemicals.

Hilda Klasky

Hilda Klasky, an R&D staff member in the Scalable Biomedical Modeling group at ORNL, has been selected as a senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery, or ACM.

red and green sphagnum moss

A type of peat moss has surprised scientists with its climate resilience: Sphagnum divinum is actively speciating in response to hot, dry conditions. 

The sun sets behind the ORNL Visitor Center in this aerial photo from April 2023. Credit: Kase Clapp/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

In fiscal year 2023 — Oct. 1–Sept. 30, 2023 — Oak Ridge National Laboratory was awarded more than $8 million in technology maturation funding through the Department of Energy’s Technology Commercialization Fund, or TCF.

: This schematic of tokamak core-pedestal-boundary regions show what will be simulated by an ORNL project applying machine learning to plasma physics modeling. Credit: Giacomin et al., J. Comput. Phys., 463, (2022) 111294, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2022.11294

ORNL will lead three new DOE-funded projects designed to bring fusion energy to the grid on a rapid timescale.