Feature Articles

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 21-Jun-2026 11:15 ET (21-Jun-2026 15:15 GMT/UTC)

Jefferson Lab accelerator gets a fresh pair of eyes

DOE/Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

A newly invented detector is allowing physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to “see” neutrons like never before. Fresh insight from these devices has improved operation of the lab’s powerful electron accelerator, which is used in nuclear physics studies of the atom’s nucleus.

Beamlines cast precious light on SARS-CoV-2, emerging variants and vaccines that will stop them

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

New research highlights the critical, continued role APS beamlines play in developing vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19 and its variants.

How can next-gen computer chips reduce our carbon footprint?

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Berkeley Lab scientists Maurice Garcia-Sciveres and Ramamoorthy Ramesh discuss how future microchips could perform better – and require less energy – than silicon. Over the next three years, they will lead two of the 10 projects recently awarded nearly $54 million by the Department of Energy to increase energy efficiency in microelectronics design and production.

Argonne and NIU team up to host AI camp for high school students

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

Regional high school students learn the fundamentals of AI at a four-week summer camp hosted by Argonne and Northern Illinois University.

Julia R. Greer: Then and Now / 2011 Early Career Award Winner

DOE/US Department of Energy

Julia R. Greer, a professor of Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering at Caltech, created a new nano-fabrication approach to understand how materials in nuclear reactors can withstand radiation damage with the support of her 2011 Early Career Research Program award.

Seeking to reduce carbon footprint with foot on two continents

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Johannes Lercher, Battelle Fellow and director of the PNNL Institute for Integrated Catalysis, envisions energy storage solutions at the new Energy Sciences Center.

Argonne quantum research may reshape how we sense and relay data

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne is leading the way toward a quantum future, conducting cross-disciplinary research through its quantum initiative and via the collaborative center Q-NEXT.

New insights into proteins may aid cancer and infertility research

DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

Scientists used Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source to determine the structure of a protein associated with the BRCA2 gene. This protein is involved in repairing breaks in DNA, and the research could have implications for cancer and infertility studies.

Journal: Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

Revolutionizing data access through tiled

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory

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.

Jinlong Zhang: Then and Now / 2011 Early Career Award Winner

DOE/US Department of Energy

At Argonne National Laboratory, staff scientist Jinlong Zhang performs R&D on the CERN ATLAS and DAQ systems. These systems select and collect data from the billion-plus proton-proton collisions per second in particle physics experiments.