Feature Stories

Distinguished materials scientist Takeshi Egami has spent his career revealing the complex atomic structure of metallic glass and other liquids. He studies these materials at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 

 

As winners of the 2024 U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program, four scientists from Argonne National Laboratory are each receiving an award of $550,000 a year for five years to help them answer complex questions.

As high-tech companies ramp up construction of massive data centers to meet the business boom in artificial intelligence, one component is becoming an increasingly rare commodity: electricity. With decades of experience in making HPC more energy efficient, the OLCF may serve as a resource for best “bang for the buck” practices in a suddenly burgeoning industry. 

The electric grid is becoming more dynamic, including two-way connections with electric vehicles and grid storage. 

The 12^th annual Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing (ATPESC) offers intensive two-week training for next-generation scientists, computer experts, data analysts and others aiming to infuse their computing research with new vibrancy.

Gazing out on a freshwater pond, you may see tiny green plants with oval shaped leaves floating in clusters. In overgrown ponds, these plants coat the water’s surface. These plants – called duckweed or water lentils – can grow so fast that they can double their numbers in just one to two days. But what you can’t see in that pond is the evolutionary battle between the plants and microbes trying to invade them. 

For the first time, the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory will run equipment developed at its research facilities on a commercially available quantum network at EPB Quantum Network powered by Qubitekk. Starting this month, ORNL is testing its Automatic Polarization Compensation, or APC, a key technology needed to convey quantum data across a network while maintaining all its complexities and probabilities. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, or UTC, the first American university to host a permanent connection to a commercially available quantum network, is also participating in the effort to validate the technology's commercial viability.

After years of preparation, the first neutrinos have been observed by the Short-Baseline Near Detector collaboration. The data SBND collects will expand our knowledge of how neutrinos interact with matter and will be used to search for evidence of new physics.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Western Michigan University researchers demonstrated pavement markers that use embedded microchips to transmit road shape information to self-driving cars. The technology, demonstrated to government officials in Chattanooga, TN, helps self-driving cars navigate in all weather conditions and outperformed commercial systems on roads with steep curves.