Newswise — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, ​“It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.” If the celebrated poet were alive today, he might admit that, when it comes to vague beginnings, love is not alone.

Ask two people when the week begins, and you may get different answers. Ask scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory when one of its user facilities got off the ground, and you’ll hear a similar story.

Officially, the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS) was commissioned in 1985, and 2025 marked 40 years of operation. Yet working in this DOE Office of Science user facility — built to reveal the structure and properties of atomic nuclei — are staff whose work predates that milestone by years.

“I came on in 1978,” said Gary Zinkann, an ATLAS principal engineer. ​“That was 47 years ago.”

Zinkann’s long tenure illustrates how ATLAS grew from theories, ideas and technological breakthroughs that enabled its planning, construction and commissioning. It also reflects a culture of continuous improvement — expanding capabilities and generating a steady stream of scientific insights.

“ATLAS stands as a testament to decades of scientific ingenuity and dedication,” said Guy Savard, ATLAS scientific director and Argonne Distinguished Fellow. ​“Its history is one of impactful discovery and continuous renewal. At ATLAS, we are always working to improve, innovate and expand our capabilities.”

A vision takes shape

ATLAS’ origins reach back to the early 1970s, when Argonne physicists set out to push the boundaries of nuclear physics research. The community was tackling fundamental questions about the forces inside atomic nuclei — the building blocks of matter. Argonne scientists envisioned a facility that would use superconducting technology to accelerate heavy‑ion beams and provide an unprecedented tool for nuclear physics studies.

At the time, the idea of a superconducting linear accelerator (linac) for nuclear physics was new. Superconducting materials lose electrical resistance at extremely low temperatures, enabling a high accelerating field at a comparatively low input power. Applying this technology to accelerators was largely uncharted territory.

Researchers, including Lowell Bollinger at Argonne and Caltech physicist Ken Shepard, who later came to Argonne, began collaborating to explore the feasibility of this approach. Their work led to the development of niobium split‑ring resonators, first successfully tested at Argonne in 1977.

“Developing the niobium split‑ring resonator is arguably the major technological breakthrough that made ATLAS possible,” said Benjamin Kay, a group leader at ATLAS. ​“They would ultimately become the technological backbone for the entire facility.”

These resonators, cooled with liquid helium, demonstrated the potential to accelerate heavy ions with unprecedented efficiency. Building on this breakthrough, Argonne scientists constructed a prototype superconducting ​“booster” linac, consisting of 24 resonators. The booster accelerated an ion beam delivered by Argonne’s existing tandem Van de Graaff accelerator, in use since the 1960s, and its negative‑ion source.

“The booster linac was the first part of what later became ATLAS,” said Zinkann, who retired in 2016.

Beginning operation in 1978, the booster served as a testbed for the split-ring resonator technology, allowing scientists to refine designs and address technical challenges.

“It was a very active time: designing, testing, troubleshooting,” said Zinkann. ​“And in the middle of all that, researchers were doing experiments too!”

By the early 1980s, the booster linac had logged more than 10,000 hours of beam time, much of it for experiments conducted by users visiting Argonne from other institutions. These early successes demonstrated the feasibility and promise of superconducting linacs for nuclear physics research and gave Argonne the confidence to build a full‑scale facility.

With funding from the U.S. Congress, construction of ATLAS began in the early 1980s. ATLAS would combine the booster with a second linac — also using split‑ring resonators — and new ​“target areas” equipped with detectors to collect detailed experimental data on the accelerated ion beams.

In 1983, Bollinger, then director of ATLAS, wrote to the Argonne community: ​“Scientists from all over the world will use it to expand the boundaries of research into the forces that hold together atomic nuclei.”

That aspiration helped establish ATLAS as a global hub for nuclear physics research.

The final stages of ATLAS’ construction included fabrication and installation of the superconducting resonators for the new linac (dubbed the ​“ATLAS linac” to distinguish it from the older booster linac), expansion of the liquid helium refrigerator and cryogenic plumbing system, and expansion of the computer control system to manage the new linac and beamlines. The team completed the project on time and within budget.

Building a foundation

The ATLAS facility quickly became a global center for nuclear physics research, hosting a growing community of scientists and delivering high‑quality beams for studies of nuclear structure, astrophysics and fundamental interactions. By the late 1980s, ATLAS was serving hundreds of researchers each year, providing beams of stable isotopes for experiments probing the quantum structure of nuclei and the processes that forge elements in stars.

But even in the facility’s early years, ATLAS leadership was looking ahead.

“Almost immediately after the commissioning, ATLAS leaders announced plans to replace its negative-ion source with a positive-ion source,” said Kay.

Initially, ATLAS used a negative‑ion sputter source to generate ion beams, which were accelerated and stripped to positive ions in the tandem Van de Graaff accelerator for subsequent acceleration in the linacs. Installing a positive-ion source would eliminate a need for the Van de Graaff, improving performance and allowing the facility to access the heaviest elements.

As with the booster in the 1970s, Argonne scientists and engineers collaborated to design and build what they needed. Those efforts led to the development of a new generation of ​“quarter‑wave” resonators to support the positive‑ion source.

“There’s no catalog for ordering positive‑ion sources for superconducting linear accelerators,” said Zinkann.

The Positive Ion Injector (PII) was completed and brought online in 1992. Though only seven years after ATLAS’ 1985 commissioning, PII expanded ATLAS’ capabilities by enabling beams of some of the heaviest elements, including uranium, and increased available beam currents for lighter ions. The 1960s‑era tandem Van de Graaff accelerator still served as an injector until its retirement in 2014. Its former space at ATLAS now houses stopped-beam experimental stations.

New additions

Expanding ATLAS’ capabilities widened its scientific impact. Early instruments enabled studies of nuclear reactions inside stars, shedding light on the processes that created most elements and the role of nuclear reactions in stellar evolution. Other ATLAS‑enabled efforts probed the heaviest elements and the limits of nuclear stability.

“No two days were alike,” said Zinkann. ​“A lot of times, our work was about seeing a need, finding a way to fulfill it, and then we’d see the next need and get started on that. Over time, that can make a big difference.”

Advanced instruments for nuclear structure and reaction studies were developed and deployed, including:

• Fragment Mass Analyzer, brought online in 1992 for high‑precision measurements of nuclear masses and decay processes.
• ATLAS Positron Experiment (APEX), commissioned in 1993 to study electrons and positrons emitted during heavy‑ion collisions.
• Canadian Penning Trap, which began operations in 2000 for high‑precision mass measurements of exotic nuclei.

“Like all of our instruments at ATLAS, these were wise investments that continue to pay scientific dividends today for researchers, the public and the world at large,” said Walter Wittmer, ATLAS operations director.

In 1997, the ATLAS team installed and commissioned Gammasphere, one of the world’s most powerful gamma‑ray spectrometers for nuclear structure research. Gammasphere collects data on gamma‑ray emissions following heavy‑ion fusion reactions, enabling high‑precision studies of nuclear shapes, decay processes and the forces that bind protons and neutrons. Its arrival allowed scientists to explore the quantum structure of nuclei and phenomena such as nuclear superfluidity and shape coexistence.

In cooperation with DOE and other partners, ATLAS was a finalist in the 1990s to host a new facility dedicated to rare‑isotope beams. Although DOE ultimately selected Michigan State University for that facility, ATLAS expanded in complementary directions and continues to grow its role in rare‑isotope science.

Expanding capabilities

In 2009, ATLAS commissioned the Californium Rare Ion Breeder Upgrade (CARIBU) system. Led by Savard and Richard Pardo, then ATLAS’ operations manager, CARIBU enabled production of neutron‑rich isotopes for experiments by harnessing the fission of californium‑252 to generate rare isotopes for acceleration.

“Adding CARIBU to ATLAS enabled the production of neutron‑rich isotopes that were previously inaccessible, opening new avenues for nuclear physics research,” said Savard. ​“CARIBU was particularly valuable for studying nuclear reactions that occur during supernova explosions and neutron star mergers.”

CARIBU allowed researchers to examine nuclear reactions involved in the rapid neutron‑capture process (r‑process) — a key mechanism that creates heavy elements such as gold, platinum and uranium during supernovae and neutron star mergers.

ATLAS continued to add detectors and systems for a broader range of experiments, including:

These projects also gave ATLAS engineers opportunities to innovate. HELIOS, for example, incorporates a solenoid magnet from a hospital’s decommissioned MRI scanner.

“Never underestimate what a top‑rate engineering team can do,” said Kay.

Another major addition was the Gamma‑Ray Energy Tracking In‑beam Nuclear Array (GRETINA), a precision gamma‑ray detector for high‑resolution studies of nuclear structure. Built by the U.S. nuclear physics community, GRETINA arrived at Argonne in 2013 for the first of what would ultimately be four experimental campaigns, the last of which ended in 2025. In between campaigns at ATLAS, it was installed at other accelerator facilities. GRETINA collected detailed data on gamma rays emitted during nuclear reactions, providing insights into nuclear forces and structure. Argonne scientists were instrumental in developing GRETA (Gamma‑Ray Energy Tracking Array), a next‑generation detector that will eventually replace GRETINA at ATLAS. GRETA will provide 3D tracking of gamma‑ray paths and energies for even more precise studies.

“Throughout its recent history, ATLAS has remained at the forefront of nuclear physics research, enabling studies of rare isotopes, nuclear reactions and fundamental symmetries,” said Wittmer. ​“The facility’s research programs continue to address key questions in nuclear astrophysics, nuclear structure and the properties of exotic nuclei.”

ATLAS further expanded its capabilities in 2023 with the installation of the ATLAS Material Irradiation Station (AMIS), which is used to emulate material damage in nuclear reactors. AMIS uses some of the accelerator’s lowest energies to deliver heavy ions that quickly degrade the material properties — without the radioactivity associated with irradiation in a reactor — making the development of new reactor materials safer and more efficient.

Today, ATLAS hosts researchers from across the U.S. and around the world, providing more than 6,000 hours of beam time annually.

“ATLAS has maintained strong engagement with its user community, hosting workshops, meetings and collaborative research projects to ensure that its capabilities align with the needs of scientists worldwide,” said Savard. ​“We move in the directions that will allow our users to deepen the scientific questions they can answer using ATLAS.”

Innovating for the future

Forty years after commissioning, ATLAS continues its tradition of continuous improvement to stay at the forefront of rare‑isotope research.

The team is installing and commissioning nuCARIBU, an upgraded version of the original CARIBU system, that will provide a reliable, on‑demand supply of radioactive isotopes for experiments while simplifying maintenance and improving operational efficiency. nuCARIBU will rely on neutron‑induced fission of uranium to produce isotopes and, for the first time, will allow the source to be turned off when not needed.

ATLAS is also preparing for the next generation of nuclear physics research through the N=126 Factory, an experimental system designed to provide beams of rare, neutron‑rich radioactive isotopes of very heavy elements. These isotopes are difficult to generate by other means and are important for understanding how the heaviest elements in the universe are made.

And to make the most efficient use of these new capabilities, ATLAS is pursuing a multi‑user upgrade that will enable the facility to deliver beams to two experimental stations simultaneously — one stable beam and one rare-isotope.

ATLAS’ beginning may be hard to pin down, and its history is one of continuous change. But its culture of improvement, expansion and excellence has put it on secure footing for tomorrow.

“The history of ATLAS is a story of growth, adaptation and scientific excellence. That will also be its future,” said Savard. ​“This facility’s ability to innovate and grow from its ambitious origins has allowed ATLAS to remain a vital resource for nuclear physics research, even as the field has evolved. As ATLAS looks to the future, it is well‑positioned to tackle the next generation of scientific challenges, continuing its legacy of discovery and its mission to unlock the secrets of the universe.”

Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, under contract number DE‐AC02‐06CH11357. This research used resources of the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

Newswise — Liquid electrolytes enable fast ion transport but can raise safety concerns, and lithium metal anodes—despite their high capacity—can grow dendrites that trigger short circuits and rapid failure. Solid polymer electrolytes are attractive because they are processable and potentially compatible with lithium metal, yet many polymer systems (especially PEO-based) become highly crystalline at room temperature, restricting Li⁺ mobility. Adding plasticizers can improve conductivity, but excessive softening may weaken mechanical protection and destabilize interfaces. Meanwhile, strengthening the polymer often worsens ionic transport, leaving researchers stuck between conductivity and robustness. Based on these challenges, deeper research is needed to develop solid polymer electrolytes that simultaneously deliver high ionic conductivity and high mechanical strength.

Researchers at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University report a fiber-reinforced composite solid polymer electrolyte designed to overcome the long-standing “conductivity–strength” dilemma in polymer-based solid-state batteries. In a study published (DOI: 10.1007/s10118-025-3515-3) online on January 19, 2026 in the Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, the team shows that combining a porous PTFE fibrous membrane (as a reinforcing framework) with the plastic-crystal additive succinonitrile yields an electrolyte that is both mechanically robust and electrochemically effective for lithium metal battery operation.

The team’s concept borrows from structural engineering: a lightweight porous framework provides mechanical reinforcement, while the polymer phase supplies ion transport. They infiltrated a PEO/PVDF-HFP/LiTFSI matrix containing succinonitrile into a porous PTFE fibrous membrane via solution casting, aiming for uniform filling and intimate interfacial contact. Microscopy suggests the PTFE scaffold helps “hold” the electrolyte in a continuous network, while the succinonitrile component improves wetting and reduces PEO crystallinity—two factors expected to open faster Li⁺ pathways.

Material optimization mattered. At an optimized 20 wt% succinonitrile, the electrolyte achieved an ionic conductivity of 7.6×10⁻⁴ S·cm⁻¹ at 60 °C while retaining strong mechanical performance, reaching 3.31 MPa tensile strength with 352% elongation—a combination intended to resist dendrite penetration without sacrificing flexibility. Electrochemically, the composite sustained lithium symmetric-cell cycling for about 2,500 hours at 0.15 mA·cm⁻², indicating stable interfacial behavior during repeated plating/stripping. In Li//LiFePO₄ full cells, the electrolyte delivered durable cycling with 91.6% capacity retention after 300 cycles at 0.5C and coulombic efficiency consistently above 99.9%, supporting the claim that the composite design improves both stability and longevity.

According to the authors, the performance comes from a deliberate “division of labor” inside the composite. The PTFE fibrous membrane acts as a thermally stable, mechanically strong backbone that helps maintain structural integrity under cycling stress. Succinonitrile suppresses polymer crystallinity and promotes faster Li⁺ transport, while PVDF-HFP improves salt dissolution and contributes to electrochemical stability. Together, these components create a reinforced yet conductive electrolyte architecture that can be fabricated by straightforward casting and still deliver long-duration symmetric-cell stability and reliable full-cell cycling.

For solid-state lithium metal batteries to become practical, electrolytes must be manufacturable at scale, mechanically resilient, and consistently conductive—especially under conditions where dendrites are likely. This work points to a pragmatic materials strategy: instead of chasing a single “perfect” polymer, build composites in which a porous fiber scaffold provides structural protection and a carefully tuned additive accelerates ion transport. The demonstrated thousands-hour lithium cycling stability and strong capacity retention in LiFePO₄ full cells suggest potential for safer, longer-lived energy storage. If the approach translates to broader cathode chemistries and lower-temperature operation, it could help move polymer-based solid-state batteries closer to real-world deployment.

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References

DOI

10.1007/s10118-025-3515-3

Original Souce URL

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-025-3515-3

Funding information

This research was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2021YFB3801500) and Fundamental Research Funds of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (No. 24202105-Y).

About Chinese Journal of Polymer Science (CJPS)

Chinese Journal of Polymer Science (CJPS) is a monthly journal published in English and sponsored by the Chinese Chemical Society and the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. CJPS is edited by a distinguished Editorial Board headed by Professor Qi-Feng Zhou and supported by an International Advisory Board in which many famous active polymer scientists all over the world are included. Manuscript types include Editorials, Rapid Communications, Perspectives, Tutorials, Feature Articles, Reviews and Research Articles. According to the Journal Citation Reports, 2024 Impact Factor (IF) of CJPS is 4.0.

Newswise — MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (03/18/2026) — University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers working on the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS) experiment are part of a team who successfully cooled the experiment to its base temperature—the temperature required for the superconducting detectors to become operational, which is hundreds of times colder than outer space.

Reaching base temperature marks a major transition for SuperCDMS, from construction and installation to commissioning and science operations. For SuperCDMS, that temperature is thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, where atomic and molecular motion ceases.

The experiment is designed to detect dark matter particles—mysterious particles that make up 85 percent of all matter in the Universe—that are already passing through Earth. Dark matter remains strange and illusive but tremendously important to our understanding of nature, from the most fundamental particles to origins and evolution of the Universe.

“Getting to base temperature is a major milestone in a years-long campaign to build a low-background facility capable of housing our sensitive cryogenic solid state detectors,” said Priscilla Cushman, a professor in the University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy and the Spokesperson of SuperCDMS. “At these extremely low temperatures, our installed detectors can now scan a whole new region of parameter space where the lightest dark matter particles may be lurking.”

The University of Minnesota team designed, procured, and assembled the low background shield that protects the detectors from trace radioactivity and neutrons produced by high-energy cosmic rays in the cavern walls. The four-meter tall, four-meter-diameter cylindrical enclosure is made of layers of ultra-pure lead to stop the gammas and high-density polyethylene to moderate the neutrons. 

In addition to major roles in the installation and cooldown of the experiment, University of Minnesota researchers have developed new reconstruction algorithms and analysis techniques designed to rapidly extract dark matter signals from the data that will be flowing in a few months. The group is at the forefront of the science effort, with the help of School of Physics and Astronomy Assistant Professor Yan Liu, who is the Analysis Working Group Chair for the experiment.

The SuperCDMS experiment is sited at SNOLAB, a research facility located roughly 6,800 feet underground in an active nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario. Buried at this depth, the experiment is protected from cosmic rays and other background particles that could drown out the faint signals scientists are trying to observe.

With base temperature achieved, the collaboration will move into detector commissioning, a months-long process of turning on, calibrating and optimizing each detector channel. Beyond dark matter, SuperCDMS will allow scientists to study rare isotopes, probe energies no one has measured before and maybe uncover entirely new kinds of particle interactions.

The SuperCDMS experiment is a joint project of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

In addition to Cushman and Liu, the University of Minnesota team includes postdoctoral researchers Shubham Pandey and Himangshu Neog, research scientist Scott Fallows, and graduate students, Zachary Williams, Elliott Tanner and Chi Cap—all from the School of Physics and Astronomy.

For more information about the SuperCDMS experiment and collaboration, visit the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory website. Read the news release on the SLAC website.

BYLINE: Lauren Biron

Newswise — Although dark matter makes up most of the mass in our universe, it has never been directly observed. To hunt for lighter dark matter and other rare phenomena, researchers must solve a puzzle in their supersensitive detectors: an unexpected number of low-energy events, called the “low-energy excess” or LEE, that can obscure the rare signals they seek.

In a study published on Dec. 30, 2025, in Applied Physics Letters, researchers with the TESSERACT (Transition-Edge Sensors with Sub-EV Resolution And Cryogenic Targets) experiment identified one of the culprits behind the low-energy excess. They found that the noise comes not from the electronics or the surrounding environment, but from tiny bursts of vibrational energy within the silicon crystal of the detectors themselves. And the thicker the silicon, the more LEE events there are.

Since at least some LEE events come from tiny changes in the detector material itself, researchers estimate they also cause problems in superconducting qubits, the sensitive building blocks of quantum computers that are often made of silicon. The bursts of energy can create “quasiparticles” that disturb a qubit’s fragile quantum state, causing it to decohere or fail. So even in carefully shielded quantum systems, some errors could be coming from inside the house.

“Quantum computers could perform calculations our current systems can’t, but only if people can make qubits that are stable,” said Dan McKinsey, the director of TESSERACT and a scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), which leads the experiment. “Because the detectors we use for our dark matter experiment have a similar backbone to what is in qubits, by understanding a problem in particle physics, we’re also getting information on how to improve the quantum computing side.”

To pinpoint where LEE events were coming from, TESSERACT collaborators fabricated superconducting phonon sensors (which pick up quantum vibrations, or phonons) on two nearly identical silicon chips that were 1 and 4 millimeters thick. In both detectors, the number of events decreased over time as they were cooled, and the thicker chip saw four times as many low-energy events — pointing to the volume of silicon itself as the source, rather than outside causes.

Now that the scientific community knows the number of LEE events relates to how thick the silicon is, some groups will be able to improve their sensors simply by scaling back how much silicon they use. But it’s still just the first step in understanding exactly what causes the bursts of energy and finding an engineering solution to get rid of the background noise completely.

“Superconducting qubits for computers are designed to ignore the environment so that their quantum state survives,” said Matt Pyle, a TESSERACT collaborator, associate professor at UC Berkeley, and researcher at Berkeley Lab. “In contrast, our photon and phonon sensors use similar technology, but they’re designed to be incredibly sensitive to their environment so that they can sense dark matter. That makes our detectors unique and powerful tools for diagnosing environmental sources that cause decoherence and limit quantum computers.”

During the experiment, TESSERACT’s thinner detector also achieved a world-leading energy resolution of 258.5 millielectronvolts. That means it could distinguish between two events with energies differing by only a few hundredths of an electronvolt, several times smaller than the amount of energy carried by a single particle of visible light. That precision will allow scientists to distinguish extremely faint signals from background noise, essential for tracking down dark matter.

TESSERACT is currently in the prototype and construction phase, and will eventually be installed in France’s Modane Underground Laboratory. The TESSERACT collaboration also includes researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, Caltech, Florida State University, IJCLab (Laboratoire de Physique des 2 Infinis Iréne Joliot-Curie), IP2I (Institut de Physique des 2 Infinis de Lyon), LPSC (Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie), Texas A&M University, UC Berkeley, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Zürich, and QUP (the International Center for Quantum-field Measurement Systems for Studies of the Universe and Particles).

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

Newswise — Five faculty members from Georgia Tech have been elected as senior members of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). As members, they are recognized as distinguished academic inventors with a strong record of patenting technologies, licensing IP, and commercializing their research. Their innovations have made, or have the potential to make, meaningful impacts on society. 

 “The election of our faculty members to this prestigious association is a powerful affirmation of the innovative research happening at Georgia Tech,” said Raghupathy “Siva” Sivakumar, chief commercialization officer at Georgia Tech. “Their work to take research to market reflects the growing importance of invention in addressing society’s most complex challenges. This recognition signals the strength of the commercialization ecosystem at Georgia Tech to advance impactful research, encourage innovation, and prepare the next generation of inventors.” 

The 2026 Georgia Tech NAI senior members are: 

• Jason David Azoulay, associate professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering School and School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
• Jaydev Prataprai Desai, professor and cardiovascular biomedical engineering distinguished chair, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
• David Frost, Elizabeth and Bill Higginbotham Professor and Regents’ Entrepreneur, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Chandra Raman, Dunn Family Professor of Physics, School of Physics
• Aaron Young, associate professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Jason David Azoulay

Azoulay is recognized for pioneering new classes of functional materials through innovative polymer synthesis, heterocycle chemistry, and polymerization reactions. His work spans electronic, photonic, and quantum materials, device fabrication, and chemical sensing for environmental monitoring. He has demonstrated new classes of organic semiconductors with infrared functionality and holds nine issued U.S. patents. Azoulay is the Georgia Research Alliance Vasser-Woolley Distinguished Investigator and holds a joint appointment in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. 

Jaydev Prataprai Desai

Desai is recognized for advancing medical robotics and translational biomedical innovation with inventions spanning robotically steerable guidewires for endovascular interventions, minimally invasive surgical tools, MEMS sensors for cancer diagnosis, and rehabilitation robotics for people with motor impairments. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Robotics Research, has authored more than 225 peer-reviewed publications, and serves as the Director of Georgia Center for Medical Robotics at Georgia Tech. Desai holds 16 U.S. and International patents.  

David Frost

Frost has built a career at the intersection of civil engineering research and entrepreneurship. A leader in the study of natural and human-made disasters and their impacts on infrastructure, he has founded two Georgia Tech-based software companies: Dataforensics, which offers tools for subsurface data collection and infrastructure project management, and Filio, an AI-powered mobile platform that supports visual asset management in construction and post-disaster reconnaissance. In 2023, Frost was named a Regents’ Entrepreneur by the University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents, a designation reserved for tenured faculty who have successfully taken their research into a commercial setting. He holds four U.S. patents.  

Chandra Raman

Raman is a physicist, inventor, and technology entrepreneur whose research on ultracold atoms is enabling a new generation of ultraprecise quantum sensing devices. He is the co-inventor of chip-scale atomic beam technology — a breakthrough that makes it possible to miniaturize quantum sensors for navigation and timing applications in environments where GPS fails, with uses spanning autonomous vehicles, aerospace, and national security. Raman holds six U.S. patents, three of which have been issued and two licensed. To bring his inventions to market, he founded 8Seven8 Inc., Georgia’s first quantum hardware company. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and an advisor to national and space-based quantum initiatives. 

Aaron Young

Young directs the Exoskeleton and Prosthetic Intelligent Controls Lab, where he develops robotic exoskeletons and intelligent control systems to improve walking function and physical capability for people with mobility impairments and industrial safety applications. His research has been supported by major federal grants from the National Institutes of Health, and he holds three U.S. patents. Young works with Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing and Quadrant-i to advance promising technologies toward real-world adoption. 

About Georgia Tech’s Office of Commercialization 

The Office of Commercialization is the nexus of research commercialization and entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech, bringing leading-edge research and innovation to market. It comprises six key units — ATDC, CREATE-X, VentureLab, Quadrant-i, Technology Licensing, and Velocity Startups — that empower students and faculty to launch startups, manage intellectual property, and transform research ideas into positive societal impact. Learn more at commercialization.gatech.edu. 

About the National Academy of Inventors 

The National Academy of Inventors is a member organization comprising U.S. and international universities, and governmental and nonprofit research institutes, with over 4,000 individual inventor members and fellows spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide. It was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors with patents issued from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society. Learn more at academyofinventors.org. 

Newswise — WASHINGTON, March 3, 2026 — When you reach the bottom of a container of milk or honey, you might be tempted to tip the container over to get that last pesky little bit out. After all, you only need another teaspoon for that recipe, and you’re sure it’s in there!

In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Brown University present two related studies about thin film fluid flows in the kitchen: one about the relationship between how long it takes to tip the remaining liquid out of a container and its viscosity, and the other about the ideal time to wait before dumping water out of a wok to minimize rusting — it’s more effective to wait a few minutes to let the water accumulate so there’s more to pour out.

“The kitchen is sort of the prime laboratory,” said author Jay Tang. “It deals with a lot of chemistry, materials science, and physics.”

Most people have an intuitive sense of what viscosity is, often described as how thick a fluid feels. It is measured scientifically by applying a certain amount of force to a fluid and measuring its flow rate.

“If you want to empty a jar of water — a few brief seconds, and you have very little left. But if you try to empty a jar of honey, you need to wait longer,” said author Thomas Dutta. “How much longer? The viscosity can tell us.”

By measuring various examples, the researchers derived an exact equation for this flow. A particularly sustainable person can use this to decide how long to wait to collect 99% of what remains in their jar — but for most people, the intuitive understanding that something viscous, like honey or syrup, takes longer than water does will suffice.

“This tipping thing used to happen in my home when I was a kid,” said Dutta. “My grandma would do it with oil bottles or condensed milk.”

The same principle applies to drying out a wok. After washing and dumping out the initial water, Dutta and Tang calculated the ideal amount of time one should allow the remaining water to reaccumulate at its bottom before dumping it again — too long, and it will rust, but too short, and not enough of the water will pool. Figuring out just the right amount of time relies, unsurprisingly, on the viscosity of water. The answer: a few minutes.

“We use these common household examples to really try to show people in a quantitative way that these are all thin film fluid flow, and we can use fluid mechanics to calculate and predict and reliably estimate things,” said Tang. “The things people handle on a daily basis have a lot of physics behind them.”

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The article “Thin film flow in the kitchen” is authored by Thomas T. Dutta and Jay X. Tang. It will appear in Physics of Fluids on March 3, 2026 (DOI: 10.1063/5.0308586). After that date, it can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0308586.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Physics of Fluids is devoted to the publication of original theoretical, computational, and experimental contributions to the dynamics of gases, liquids, and complex fluids. See https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pof.

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Newswise — Two researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have been named recipients of 2025 Early Career Research Program awards from the DOE Office of Science. David Kaphan and Yong Zhao will each receive $550,000 per year for five years to further their research.

This DOE Office of Science program seeks to strengthen the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to outstanding researchers early in their careers, when many scientists make formative contributions. Awardees were selected from a large pool of applicants from universities and national labs based on peer review by scientific experts.

David Kaphan is a chemist in Argonne’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering division. His research focuses on designing a new generation of catalysts — materials that speed up chemical reactions — for chemical transformations to overcome key kinetic limitations of today’s catalysts. His project aims to explore the potential of electric field-responsive oxides, such as ferroelectrics, to actively control the surface-level electronic characteristics of catalytic active sites. This approach could enable the development of catalysts that adapt during chemical transformations, optimizing reactivity for different phases of chemical synthesis processes.

Kaphan’s project will study the complex role that external electric fields can play in the modulation of electronic surface properties during catalytic processes. He will use X-ray absorption spectroscopy techniques and other methods at the Advanced Photon Source and the Center for Nanoscale Materials — both DOE Office of Science user facilities at Argonne — to measure properties such as field responsive surface electron density and catalytic reactivity. Additionally, the project will integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate the exploration of reaction parameters and electric field conditions. This work has the potential to revolutionize catalyst design for critical processes such as selective methane oxidation and ammonia synthesis.

“Stimulus-responsive, nonequilibrium catalysis represents an exciting opportunity to overcome the classical limitations of static processes and increase efficiency in chemical transformations,” said Kaphan. ​“This support will allow us to explore new frontiers in field-responsive dynamic catalyst design and develop new solutions to address key challenges in energy-related chemistry.”

Yong Zhao is an assistant physicist in the Physics division. His research seeks to address one of the most fundamental questions in nuclear physics: understanding the internal structure of protons and neutrons. These are key objectives of multidimensional proton imaging efforts at DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and the forthcoming Electron-Ion Collider at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Both protons and neutrons consist of different combinations of quarks and gluons. Zhao plans to develop a new theoretical approach and use lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) for precise calculations of the underlying multidimensional quark and gluon structures. This approach will enable high-precision imaging of the proton, as well as reveal the contributions of quark and gluon spin and orbital angular momentum to the proton’s spin.

Using the Aurora and Polaris supercomputers at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility, Zhao’s project aims to reduce systematic uncertainties and improve numerical precision in proton and neutron structural studies. Its insights will provide crucial theoretical guidance for experiments at Jefferson Lab, Brookhaven and other facilities.

“This award is a tremendous opportunity to push the boundaries of our understanding of the strong force and the fundamental building blocks of matter,” said Zhao. ​“I am grateful for the support that will allow us to make significant strides in this area of research.”

“David and Yong exemplify the innovative spirit and scientific excellence that are hallmarks of Argonne’s research community,” said Kawtar Hafidi, associate laboratory director for Argonne’s Physical Sciences and Engineering directorate. ​“Their groundbreaking work has the potential to transform our understanding of fundamental processes in physics and address key challenges in research and development. I look forward to seeing the impact of their efforts in the years to come.”

About Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials

The Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit https://​sci​ence​.osti​.gov/​U​s​e​r​-​F​a​c​i​l​i​t​i​e​s​/​U​s​e​r​-​F​a​c​i​l​i​t​i​e​s​-​a​t​-​a​-​G​lance.

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility provides supercomputing capabilities to the scientific and engineering community to advance fundamental discovery and understanding in a broad range of disciplines. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, the ALCF is one of two DOE Leadership Computing Facilities in the nation dedicated to open science.

About the Advanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

Newswise — Around 56 million years ago, Europe and North America began pulling apart to form what became the ever-expanding North Atlantic Ocean. Vast amounts of molten rock from Earth’s mantle reached the ocean floor as the crust stretched and thinned, creating a volcanic rifted margin between Norway and Greenland, a marine feature that has intrigued scientists for decades.

They have long argued over why so much magma surfaced here in what was among the biggest volcanic events in Earth’s history, one that is implicated in a period of intense global warming during the Eocene Epoch. Was a deep, superhot mantle plume responsible, or did crustal thinning play the bigger role?

Now, University of Utah geoscientists are stepping forward with clues to help answer this question after examining basaltic cores extracted from the ocean floor off the Norwegian coast. The chemistry seen in these drilling cores suggests that thinning of the lithosphere, driven by plate tectonics, was the more important of the two factors.

“Both of them are involved for sure. It’s a chicken and egg situation,” said Sarah Lambart, an associate professor of Geology & Geophysics. “We now have evidence for significant extension before you have this peak of magmatism.”

Her findings, reported in the journal Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, or “G-Cubed,” are based on analyses of basalt cores Lambart and an international team pulled off the ocean floor while sailing on a 2021 expedition facilitated by the International Ocean Discovery Program. The program’s Expedition 396 targeted sites on the Vøring Plateau, a marine region in the Northeast Atlantic characterized by thick basalt deposits.

How basalts reveal the formation of oceans

These basalts are time capsules representing different rifting stages during the final breakup phase of the ancient supercontinent Pangea. By analyzing their chemistry and running advanced statistical melting models, this effort, led by U graduate student Emily Cunningham, reconstructed what the mantle source rocks were made of and how melting conditions changed over time.

“Her results reveal a clear shift of mineralogy coinciding with the peak of magmatism,” Lambart said. “Combined with other pieces of evidence, we showed that this shift of mineralogy is likely due to a remobilization of metasomatic veins in the lithosphere and underplated magmatic material beneath the crust.”

These findings matter to science because volcanic rifted margins, like the Vøring Plateau, exist around the

word. They were instrumental in the formation of ocean basins and their formation coincides with major climate events and mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

“Earth is one of the few planets that we know for sure has plate tectonics and we fundamentally don’t understand how that started,” Cunningham said. “There’s still big disagreement about how and why some rifts are successful and result in the formation of an ocean, while other fails. We don’t really understand the mantle conditions that explain why those rift margins are different. This has an interesting planetary science aspect on why we have plate tectonics here [on Earth] and how that started.”

A sudden change in mineralogy 

Cunningham implemented what’s known as a Monte Carlo approach (yes, it’s a reference to games of chance) to estimate the source mineralogy of the basalts emplaced on the Vøring Plateau at the peak of the ancient magmatism. Her program modeled millions of randomly selected mineralogies based on five source minerals to estimate which recipe produced the basalts found in the cores.

Her analysis determined the source rock at peak magmatism was rich in a mineral called clinopyroxene, which proved to be the smoking gun pointing toward lithospheric thinning as the key driver.

“The fact that the peak of magmatism coincides with a clinopyroxene enrichment is exciting because it tells us that there was a change in the source,” Cunningham said. “If you just have a plume that’s upwelling from the mantle at a fairly steady state, you’re not going to expect to see such a sharp shift in the mineralogy.”

As the ocean floor stretched it probably allowed shallower mantle material, including previously intruded magmas, to melt more efficiently and contribute to the volcanic rifting we see today.

“It’s a first step to understanding mantle lithological heterogeneity. A really big topic for our group is how much of the mantle is composed of more fertile lithologies, like pyroxenite, as opposed to the classical view that the mantle is up to 99% peridotite,” Cunningham said. “It’s still largely peridotite, but how much recycled material is in the mantle and how it influences magmatic production is a big question that we’re looking at.”

The team’s findings suggest that as rifting initiated, magmas had first stalled and crystallized deep in the lithosphere, Earth’s rocky outer shell, and were later remelted and mixed back in, changing the mineral makeup of the source. Such a process could have produced extra magma without requiring extreme mantle temperatures often observed at regions of intense volcanism, such as Hawaii.

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The study titled, “Evolution of the source mineralogy and lithospheric controls on magmatism during the Northeast Atlantic continental breakup,” appeared in the journal Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, published by the American Geophysical Union. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation and American Chemical Society. Ph.D. student Cunninghram was supported by the Schlanger Fellowship program. Co-authors include Pengyuan Guo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well as Ashley Morris and Dustin Harper of the University of Utah, and an international team of scientists, representing 25 institutions, who sailed on the IOPD Expedition 396 in 2021.

Newswise — It started with a social media post from Andrej Karpathy, one of the founders of OpenAI. Last year, he tweeted, ​“There’s a new kind of coding I call ​‘vibe coding,’ where you fully give into the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.” Karpathy said that large language models and voice-to-text programs had gotten so sophisticated that he could just ask a model to create something and then copy and paste the code it generated to build a project or create a web app from scratch. ​“I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy-paste stuff, and it mostly works.” 

That groovy technique might be good for patching a glitchy website or building a phone app, but can it really change the way we do science? Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are testing vibe coding tools and techniques to see how they stand up to data-intensive scientific challenges. At a recent hackathon, researchers from across the lab gathered to learn together and test commercially available coding tools like Cursor and Warp against scientific challenges as large and hairy as the hunt for dark matter and as pressing as the optimization of nuclear power plants. 

As a long-time leader in computational science and the home of Aurora, one of the world’s fastest and most powerful supercomputers, Argonne is no stranger to grand challenges. But to solve huge problems and to process more data than ever before, researchers are working to stay at the bleeding edge of harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) for science.

Rick Stevens sees vibe coding as another way Argonne researchers can continue to speed up scientific innovation. Stevens is the associate laboratory director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences at Argonne. He has said that scientists need to be able to work as fast as they can think. He gets frustrated by the bottlenecks of current technology. But vibe coding is a productivity hack. ​“You’re unhobbled from your coding speed,” said Stevens. 

With vibe coding, researchers can interact with large language models in real time, asking them questions by talking rather than by typing commands, and then getting usable output in seconds or minutes. Stevens compared it to having an AI co-scientist — or even a team of co-scientists — working alongside you. He challenged fellow scientists to work with the technology every day. ​“You need to get your head around how to be productive in this environment,” he said. ​“Think, play and have a blast!”

Breaking barriers between ideas and action 

Part of the excitement around vibe coding is that we don’t know how it’s going to change science. At the hackathon, the vibe in the room was playful. The group was a mix of coders and non-coders from a variety of disciplines. Instead of quietly pecking away at their keyboards, researchers were laughing, bouncing ideas off each other and confidently speaking commands to their laptops. 

The promise of AI and vibe coding isn’t just about doing science faster, Stevens explained. These tools free up scientists to be more creative, to put their energy toward things that only a human can do. ​“With these tools, you’re not bottlenecked by writing code,” he said. ​“Now, you’re focused on ideas.” 

Here are some of the ideas Argonne scientists are vibing on:

1. Prototyping software to strengthen nuclear power plants

Nuclear power plants are an integral part of America’s energy supply and a reliable source of power for the growing energy needs of AI. Nuclear engineer Yeni Li and her team are creating AI models of those power plants to help plant engineers and managers predict the best times for maintenance. That knowledge can lead to more reliable and affordable energy production. 

Li said that vibe coding will be useful for setting up the software architecture she needs to turn her ideas into prototypes. ​“These tools will help us do a few days of work in a single afternoon,” said Li. 

2. Automating workflows in bioscience

Rosemarie Wilton doesn’t do a lot of coding in her work as a molecular biologist, but she does spend a significant amount of time using software tools for data analysis. Developing Python-coded pipelines would allow her to automate her data processing workflows and integrate multiple tools seamlessly. She was delighted to see how fast vibe coding could give her the command codes she needed. ​“For a coding novice, it’s really quite amazing. It will be a time saver,” she said. 

That quick win in generating command codes led Wilton and Computational Biologist Nick Chia to think about other ways vibe coding could help. Chia mused, ​“If we have an AI agent generating hypotheses for experiments, could we create another AI agent to order the chemicals or samples needed to run those experiments?” Speeding up routine processes like these could help Wilton and her team track the spread of human pathogens with greater accuracy or engineer new enzymes and biosynthetic pathways faster than ever before. 

3. Translating coding languages in science infrastructure

Zachary Sherman is a software developer who manages open-source Python tools for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement group. He came to the hackathon looking for ways to quickly translate other coding languages into Python, a task that could take years of tedious manual coding. 

“There are many different atmospheric tools in different coding languages and also databases with application programming interfaces for downloading and interacting with atmospheric datasets,” said Sherman. ​“Some of these tools are outdated. We think vibe coding can help us create tools in Python to interact with these interfaces to download and work with the datasets. We also think vibe coding will help us modernize these code bases so we can troubleshoot issues faster and save time and money as we maintain essential scientific infrastructure.”

4. Understanding the nature of the universe

Chiara Bissolotti is a nuclear physicist trying to understand how all known particles interact. Tim Hobbs is a theoretical particle physicist trying to identify unknown particles that can help us understand the nature of dark matter or other possible ​“new physics” in the universe. Both of their fields generate huge amounts of data from theoretical computer simulations, cosmological observations and experiments at research institutions such as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and the planned Electron-Ion Collider at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. The information hidden where their data sets overlap could be the key to answering some of the biggest mysteries of the universe, from quarks to the cosmos. But merging those data sets is a monumental task if you’re coding and comparing them by hand. 

“Can the data sets talk to each other?” asked Hobbs. ​“Might they be hiding common patterns, or guide us toward novel theoretical predictions or the automation of burdensome calculations?” 

Bissolotti summed it up, ​“We have many, many ideas. Many more ideas than time. If vibe coding can help us build the scaffolding of the code or help us make the data comparisons more scalable and efficient, we can cut our time to solution by a huge factor.”

5. Collaborating on complex problems in national security

Jonathan Ozik is a computational scientist who uses supercomputers and simulations to understand large and complex systems across many scientific domains, such as biological systems, health care interventions and infectious diseases in urban settings. He said vibe coding can help him explain his work to the many collaborators from different backgrounds that he works with. He also sees it as a way that he can help himself switch between complex projects. ​“It could give me a two-minute reintroduction to the code and the context I’m working in,” he said. ​“There’s no reason not to try to make your daily tasks easier.” 

Ozik predicts vibe coding will open research up to ideas we can’t yet begin to imagine: ​“If you have fewer perceived barriers, you create new possibilities. Things that were previously infeasible in science will become common.”

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

Newswise — Each year, the Physical Sciences and Engineering (PSE) directorate at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory recognizes exceptional early-career researchers breaking into their fields with the PSE Early Investigator Named Awards. In 2025, the lab announced that six awardees would be receiving support in the form of funding and mentorship to conduct groundbreaking research aligned with Argonne’s strategic mission.

One member of the 2025 cohort is Maria Żurek, an assistant physicist in Argonne’s Physics (PHY) division, who studies the fundamental structure of protons and neutrons using the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at the DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. For the PSE Early Investigator Named Award, Żurek will work under the guidance of Sylvester Joosten, interim leader of the Medium Energy group at Argonne, on a proposal titled, ​“Seeing the Unseen: Precision Calorimetry for 3D Nucleon Imaging.” In particle physics experiments, calorimetry refers to detection and analysis methods used to calculate particle energy.

“The national lab environment allows me to lead large projects and collaborate with fantastic scientists and engineers across divisions and institutions.” — Maria Żurek, Argonne assistant physicist

Here, Żurek discusses her research and other work she supports at Argonne.

Q: What role do you play at the lab?
A: I am an experimental nuclear physicist in the Physics division’s Medium Energy group, and I am working to understand the fundamental structure of the visible matter that makes up our world.

Q: What initiatives or projects are you most excited about being involved in at Argonne?
A: The national lab environment allows me to lead large projects and collaborate with fantastic scientists and engineers across divisions and institutions. I have the opportunity to work with talented postdocs on uncovering the inner workings of protons and neutrons using data from the CLAS12 experiment at Jefferson Lab, and I co-lead the development of electromagnetic calorimetry for the ePIC detector at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at the DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. I am a team player, and doing great science with great people is the best job in the world.

Q: Can you talk a bit about the research you’re conducting for your proposal for which you received the 2025 PSE Early Investigator Named Award?
A: My PSE Early Investigator Named Award project tackles a hard problem: improving calorimetry for hadrons — protons, neutrons and other similar subatomic particles — in the medium-energy range typical of experiments at Jefferson Lab. Neutral particles, like neutrons, and another subatomic particle called muons are notoriously difficult to measure in this range. I will run preliminary simulations to test a practical dual-readout approach that separates light generated by different types of subatomic interactions, with the aim of getting cleaner, more precise energy and position measurements. The goal is to open new opportunities for 3D studies of proton and neutron structure and to provide evidence that can guide the next generation of detector designs.

Q: What do you like most about your job?
A: The people I work with, the diversity of problems I get to solve and the fact that I am always learning something new.

Q: How does your work support the lab’s mission? 
A: In my work I analyze data from world-class DOE user facilities, using measurements to sharpen our most fundamental understanding of how the universe is put together. I design and test modern detector technologies that let us see proton and neutron structure with greater clarity. This work uses Argonne’s strengths in hands-on experimentation and computation, and it delivers practical capability, validated hardware, documented procedures and reconstruction tools, for national research facilities today and for the EIC tomorrow. I work with engineers, scientists and trainees across Argonne to get from concept to instrument to reliable results. That is my piece of the mission.

Q: What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
A: I love hunting for hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Chicago’s neighborhoods and suburbs with my husband, and I never tire of admiring the city’s architecture, always walking with my head up. I love going to ballet, opera, musicals, sports games and concerts. A year ago, I started aerial gymnastics, and I even appreciate the bruises because they mean I am getting better. I enjoy leaf peeping in local parks and running our annual ​“fat squirrel contest” with friends. As someone who moved here, I still carry a newcomer’s curiosity — and ope! — I’m always ready to explore one more corner of American and Midwestern culture.

Q: What other sorts of career or professional development opportunities has Argonne provided?
A: I’ve gotten a lot from Argonne’s Mentorship Program, on both sides. As a mentee, the conversations with my mentors pushed me to set clear goals and get honest feedback; they also gave me a better view of how the lab works across divisions. As a mentor, I’ve learned to give useful feedback and to connect postdocs with the right people and resources. It’s simple, but it works because it creates time for focused conversations. Beyond mentoring, I’ve benefited from proposal workshops, science communication sessions and serving on several internal review committees.

Q: What encouraged you to get involved in the scientific discipline you are in?
A: I have always been drawn to big questions. In school I loved math, physics and chemistry, but I also loved literature for the way a good story pulls you in. A great high school physics teacher showed me that science can do the same thing: It tells a story about how the world works. I thought I might become a teacher, but during university I spent undergraduate internships at Fermilab (another DOE national laboratory), where I saw how national labs ​“zoom in” on particles to understand the building blocks of matter. That experience shifted my path. I wanted to be part of that discovery process.

Since then, I have followed the thread from curiosity to experiment — first, learning how to measure, then learning how to ask better questions, until it became a career in nuclear physics.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.