Feature Articles

What do physicists exploring the fundamental particles that make up our universe and doctors tracking COVID-19 cases have in common? Statistics! Both sift through enormous amounts of data looking for patterns. Now members of this not-so-unlikely partnership are spreading the word about the power of statistics with math and science teachers and students.

Zhiyang Zhai, an associate biologist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, is one of 83 scientists from across the nation selected to receive funding for research as part of the DOE Office of Science’s Early Career Research Program. Zhai will use the funding to explore the role of a key enzyme in regulating plants’ metabolic processes, including the synthesis and accumulation of oil, with the aim of getting plants to produce net-zero carbon fuels.

Theoretical and experimental physicists from around the world gathered last month at Quark Matter 2022 to discuss new developments in high energy heavy ion physics. Highlights included a series of presentations and discussions about the latest findings from heavy ion research facilities—notably the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Large Hadron Collider at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN)—as well as future research directions for the field.

Packing up and moving is an arduous task. Now imagine factoring in large pieces of costly, sensitive equipment, unpredictable weather events, and a global pandemic! These were just a few of the challenges facing the Scientific Data and Computing Center (SDCC) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory as a team transported computing and networking hardware from their longstanding base to an upgraded facility.

Abhay Deshpande, director of Electron-Ion Collider science at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University, has been named a 2021 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is being recognized for his accomplishments in experimental nuclear physics at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and other facilities, and for his role in planning for a future Electron-Ion Collider at Brookhaven Lab.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory will kick-off its 75th anniversary with a live-streamed celebration. Meet three of the Lab’s leaders as they share their vision for the future of particle physics, climate science, quantum information science, and more. Then, the panel will answer questions from a live, virtual audience.

Particle smashups have begun for Run 22 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which serves up data from particle collisions to nuclear physicists all around the world. On the menu this run: collisions between beams of polarized protons interspersed with tests of innovative accelerator techniques while RHIC's recently upgraded STAR detector tracks particles emerging from collisions at a wider range of angles than ever before.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $209 million in funding for 26 new laboratory projects focusing on electric vehicles (EV), advanced batteries, and connected vehicles. Scientists from Brookhaven Lab will play key roles in two EV battery projects: one aimed at understanding and improving materials for battery anodes and cathodes and another to guide the design of safer electrolytes.

Every time scientists study a new material, they must wade through an ocean of data. Today, a whole ecosystem of scientific tools creates a wild variety of data to be explored. This exploration will now get a lot easier thanks to scientists at the National Synchrotron Light Source II. Their freshly rolled-out software tool—called Tiled—allows researchers to see, slice, and study their data more conveniently than ever before.

Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory developed a software toolkit called Wire-Cell that reconstructs and isolates neutrino data in 3D. This software directly enabled the long-awaited results from the MicroBooNE experiment announced today by Fermilab in four complementary analyses. The Wire-Cell team at Brookhaven Lab led one of the four analyses—the most sensitive analysis of the electron-neutrino interaction. Some components of the Wire-Cell toolkit were also used in the other three analyses.