Feature Articles

College students who participated in Argonne’s outreach programs while in high school returned to Argonne this summer as interns, demonstrating the effectiveness of Argonne’s STEM education pathways.

A seemingly simple shift in lithium-ion battery manufacturing could pay big dividends, improving electric vehicles’ ability to store more energy per charge and to withstand more charging cycles.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory became the first to 3D-print large rotating steam turbine blades for generating energy in power plants. Led by partner Siemens Technology, the U.S. research and development hub of Siemens AG, the project demonstrates that wire arc additive manufacturing is viable for the scalable production of critical components exceeding 25 pounds. These parts have traditionally been made using casting and forging facilities that have mostly moved abroad.

Researchers at the FLEXLAB^® facility, a unique buildings testbed at Berkeley Lab, are helping the buildings and utilities sectors and U.S. policymakers develop new technologies for a zero-carbon future. Their work could help the nation develop a flexible energy system that could better deliver electricity and clean energy to customers, manage grid conditions, and help customers save on utility bills.

Tina Brower-Thomas of Howard University and Kenneth Evans-Lutterodt of Brookhaven Lab’s National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, were recently awarded a $1.5 million grant through the Department of Defense’s University Instrumentation Program (DURIP), sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. With this funding, they will set up a research program to study the growth of perfect diamond thin films for quantum information systems (QIS).

What could smaller particle accelerators look like in the future? SLAC scientists are working on innovations that could give more researchers access to accelerator science.

Christine Nattrass, a physics professor at the University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville, has recruited a crew of mostly undergraduate students to dig deep into data from billions of particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to help unlock the secrets of matter.

Argonne’s newest version of the AAE program takes a more focused approach centered on local communities, with the intent of distributing curricula that other organizations can use for their own science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.