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Scientists recognized by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellow Award are pursuing answers to science’s biggest questions. Kristin Persson is a professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Materials Project at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Thomas Edison tried out more than 2,000 different materials for the lightbulb filament before finding the right one. Until recently, materials scientists were stuck taking a similar approach. They would be inspired, make a new material, and test it for needed properties. They would keep doing that same process over and over until they found an appropriate material.
Even finding out the properties for a specific element took enormous amounts of time. When I was a graduate student in Stockholm in 1996, I spent an entire year figuring out some properties of tungsten. If you wanted curated data about materials back then, you pulled out your reliable reference book on Phase Diagrams and Physical Properties.
But now there is a better way forward.
Learn more about how Kristin Persson has built systems to manage data to make it accessible to scientists developing new materials.
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Particle jets: Scientists use extremely powerful particle accelerators to study the interactions between subatomic particles. When protons collide in these machines, they break up into their components, including quarks and gluons. These components split and reconnect to create composite particles that spray out of the collision in jets. Researchers at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University found that particles produced in these provide information about quantum entanglement – a concept at the center of quantum information science. Studying quantum entanglement in high-energy collisions probes how far certain quantum effects extend within nuclei. |
Tailored materials: Quantum dots are tiny structures that have unique optical and electronic properties. They could revolutionize electronics and medical imaging. Researchers are learning how to customize these dots. Scientists at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have found a way to use light to change the dots’ arrangement of atoms. While the atoms usually have a standard crystal structure, the light disrupts that structure. This change can lead to new properties in the material. The study used the Advanced Photon Source and Center for Nanoscale Materials, both DOE Office of Science user facilities. |
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Manufacturing qubits: Qubits are the fundamental building block of quantum computers. Qubits made of superconducting materials that conduct electrical current without loss are promising. However, qubits are very sensitive to “noise,” or disturbances from the surrounding environment. A team led by researchers at DOE’s Berkeley Lab has developed a new fabrication technique that could make superconducting qubits more resilient to noise. This change could substantially improve this type of qubit’s performance. |
High-temperature superconductors: Superconducting materials could reduce losses from energy transmission and enable the development of quantum devices. While most superconductors only work at extremely low temperatures, there are a few that work at slightly higher ones. One of these types is cuprates, a class of copper-based material. However, the theory that explains why superconductivity happens in other materials doesn’t explain why it happens in cuprates. Researchers at DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory found that a different major model also doesn’t explain it, suggesting there is an unaccounted-for force. This work used the Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource and the National Synchrotron Light Source II, both DOE Office of Science user facilities. |
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Cyanobacteria: Cyanobacteria – also called blue-green algae – are used to produce food, fuels, and industrial chemicals. Increasing the amount of sugar they produce could help us use this microbe more effectively. Researchers at DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found a way to use the organism’s circadian rhythms to boost its sugar production. When the scientists changed the light available to the microbes, the microbes used the extra light to break down their stores of energy to produce sugar. In addition to improving our understanding of cyanobacteria, this research also increases scientists' knowledge of how organisms revise their characteristics in response to the environment. |
Plant RNA: RNA is a signaling molecule that cells use to read DNA and convert those directions into important parts like proteins. Being able to track changes in plant RNA would help scientists develop better bioenergy crops, understand stress, and detect pathogens. Scientists at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new method of detecting RNA inside plant cells. The technique results in a visible fluorescent signal. It is much more efficient than previous methods, which required collecting, processing, and analyzing plant tissue. |
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Nanoparticle shapes: Metal nanoparticles are useful for catalysis, wearable electronics, and more. To get the best performance out of these nanoparticles, scientists must be able to control their shapes and sizes. The tiny “seeds” that form first determine the particle’s final shape. These seeds are too small to measure accurately experimentally. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University used a supercomputer to model seed particles with only 100 to 200 atoms. These models will help researchers “tune” the growth of nanoparticles to yield the desired shapes and sizes in the future. |
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APS Physics: Sterile neutrinos remain elusive
Currently, scientists only know about three types of neutrinos. But a fourth potential type could provide answers to a number of scientific questions. The NOvA experiment at DOE’s Fermilab has announced the results of its search, which did not provide evidence for this fourth type.
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Leveraging AI and Supercomputing to Revolutionize Cancer Research
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Among the many ways people are using artificial intelligence in their jobs, scientists are using it to improve cancer research. Researchers are using AI on supercomputers at the DOE’s national laboratories to make cancer research more effective and efficient. By using AI to find patterns in millions of pathology reports, researchers at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are enabling cancer researchers to identify and respond to trends more quickly. Running AI programs on the Aurora supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (a DOE Office of Science user facility) is helping researchers search for molecules that could be useful in cancer treatments. |
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Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider Enters 25th and Final Run
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The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has entered its 25th and final year of operations in producing the very building blocks of the universe – quarks and gluons. RHIC is a DOE Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. It smashes together the nuclei of gold atoms or protons traveling close to the speed of light.
The final RHIC run will focus on collecting data from collisions of gold nuclei using the sPHENIX detector. This new instrument was specifically designed to precisely characterize events involving heavy quarks to improve our understanding of nuclear matter that existed in the earliest stages of the universe.
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Research News Update provides a review of recent Office of Science Communications and Public Affairs stories and features. This is only a sample of our recent work promoting research done at universities, national labs, and user facilities throughout the country.
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Please see the archive on Energy.gov for past issues.
No. 137: 5 May 2025
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