Feature Articles

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. 

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.

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.

A unique manufacturing program for large metal parts holds promise to help revitalize American manufacturing and return clean energy manufacturing technologies to the United States. The approach could greatly reduce waiting times for critical components and enable economic growth in the manufacturing sector for energy, according to scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used the Frontier supercomputer to calculate the magnetic properties of calcium-48's atomic nucleus, resolving a long-standing experimental discrepancy. Their findings provide insights into how magnetism manifests in nuclei, contributing to our understanding of nuclear forces and the processes inside supernovae. This work could influence future experimental approaches and deepen our knowledge of the universe's fundamental forces.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new automated drone inspection system that can respond rapidly to unusual electric grid behavior, especially in remote areas that are tough for a worker to reach. ORNL demonstrated the new approach at a training facility for powerline workers owned by utility partner EPB of Chattanooga in Tennessee. 

Five researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently completed an eight-week pilot commercialization coaching program as part of Safari, a program funded by DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions, or OTT, Practices to Accelerate the Commercialization of Technologies, or PACT. 

 Energy I-Corps pairs teams of researchers, often with no business background or knowledge, with industry mentors through an immersive two-month training program where the scientists define their technology’s value propositions, conduct stakeholder discovery interviews and develop viable market pathways. Two ORNL teams participated in Cohort 18, which concluded in March, helping commercialize the fruits of their research.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory led studies of the radioactive isotope beryllium-10, which existed when the solar system came into being some 4.5 to 5 billion years ago. They probed whether this isotope can be formed in sufficient quantities during the massive explosions of gigantic stars in their death throes, called supernovae.

Substances called polyethylene glycols, or PEGs, are widely used in industry, medical, cosmetics and personal care products. The problem is, when they enter the environment and build up, they can harm ecosystems and natural resources. Existing approaches to detecting these environmentally unfriendly chemicals — such as chromatography or bulk mass spectrometry — fall short because they lack the necessary sensitivity. However, new research led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory has demonstrated an effective technique for identifying PEGs in the environment.