Feature Articles

What began as novel investigations into HIV, abruptly pivoted to the novel coronavirus as it began to spread across the globe. Now, ORNL researchers are using neutrons to learn more about the SARS-CoV-2 protease--a protein enzyme that enables the virus to replicate within the human body. Insights on the protein structure and its behaviors will be used to create more accurate models for simulations in aims of finding drug inhibitors to block the virus's ability to reproduce.

Researchers and engineers at the Spallation Neutron Source are making progress on the construction of VENUS, the facility's newest neutron scattering instrument for studying materials in exciting new ways that are currently not possible for open research programs in the US.

Scientists at DOE's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory working on the Transformational Challenge Reactor, a microreactor built using 3D printing, find their work may revolutionize manufacturing in the nuclear industry -- and in other industries, too.

A team led by Abhishek Singharoy, assistant professor at Arizona State University, has used the Summit supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to simulate the structure of a possible drug target for the bacterium that causes rabbit fever. By simulating a protein called Francisella lipoprotein 3 (Flpp3), the team revealed the different possible states the protein can exist in and is virtually screening compounds that might interfere with the protein.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility and Carbon Fiber Technology Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using their materials science, fiber production and additive manufacturing expertise and capabilities to produce tooling such as custom molds for injection molding to provide US industry with the necessary resources to mass produce healthcare supplies in record time.

For a gargantuan nuclear physics experiment at CERN that will generate big data at unprecedented rates--called A Large Ion Collider Experiment, or ALICE -- the University of Tennessee has worked with the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory to lead a group of U.S. nuclear physicists from a suite of institutions in the design, development, mass production and delivery of a significant upgrade of novel particle detectors and state-of-the art electronics.

An ORNL team developed the XACC software framework to help researchers harness the potential power of quantum processing units, or QPUs. XACC offloads portions of quantum-classical computing workloads from the host CPU to an attached quantum accelerator, which calculates results and sends them back to the original system.

In the Physics Division of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, James ("Mitch") Allmond conducts experiments and uses theoretical models to advance our understanding of the structure of atomic nuclei, which are made of various combinations of protons and neutrons (nucleons).

"I focus on describing how nucleons organize and what patterns emerge from those organizations," Allmond said.