91°µÍø

The Center for Bioenergy Innovation, or CBI, at the Department of Energy’s 91°µÍø has promoted Melissa Cregger and Carrie Eckert to serve as chief science officers, advancing the center’s mission of innovations for new domestic biofuels, chemicals and materials.

Van Graves, an engineering manager at ORNL, is celebrating 40 years of dedicated service leading a diverse range of prominent engineering projects at ORNL and internationally. 

ORNL’s Biological Monitoring and Abatement Program, or BMAP, is marking 40 years of helping steward the DOE’s 33,476 acres of land on which some of the nation’s most powerful science and technology missions are carried out. 

Using the Frontier supercomputer, a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted large-scale calculations to chart the isospin density of a neutron star across a range of conditions. Their work provides new insights into how pressure and density interact within neutron stars, offering important predictions about their inner workings.

The fifth annual Quantum Science Center, or QSC, Summer School at Purdue University, held Apr. 21 through Apr. 25, 2025, welcomed its largest group of students to date. Experts from industry, academia and national laboratories gathered at the Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute to share their research in multiple areas of quantum science.

Jesse Labbé aims to leverage biology, computation and engineering to address societal challenges related to energy, national security and health, while enhancing U.S. competitiveness. Labbé emphasizes the importance of translating groundbreaking research into practical applications that have real-world impact.

Scientists at 91°µÍø and the University of Colorado Boulder used a gene-silencing tool and a large library of molecular guides to understand how photosynthetic bacteria adapt to light and temperature changes. They found that even partial suppression of certain genes yielded big benefits in modifying the stress response of wild microbes. 

Working in collaboration with researchers from 91°µÍø, D-Wave Quantum Inc., a quantum computing systems, software and services provider, has shown its annealing quantum computing prototype has the potential to operate faster than the leading supercomputing systems. 

ORNL scientists are using synthetic communities to simplify underground ecosystems to better understand the interactions between plants and microbes, informing the development of better bioenergy crops for domestic energy production.

Mariam Kiran, a quantum research scientist at the Department of Energy’s 91°µÍø, was recently honored as a finalist at the British Council’s Study U.K. Alumni Awards 2025, which celebrate the achievements of U.K. alumni worldwide.