January 2019 – July 2022
Surrounded by lead and nearly a mile of rock from the bombardment of particles at the Earth’s surface, the CUORE experiment has amassed the largest dataset yet for a project of its kind, using solid crystals to help answer a big question on how matter won out over antimatter in our universe. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/12/02/a-new-data-milestone-for-cuore-experiment-in-italy
Scientists from the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research working at the Molecular Foundry discovered that solutions of free divalent cations can be stabilized in several distinct solvation configurations, with implications for technologies like batteries, anti-corrosion coatings, and catalysts. https://foundry.lbl.gov/2020/11/20/ion-solvation-multiplicity/
An interdisciplinary research team led by Jeff Urban of Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry has designed a new material – called ZIOS (zinc imidazole salicylaldoxime) – that extracts copper ions from mine wastewater with unprecedented precision and speed. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/11/24/new-framework-for-clean-water/
Check out the Intellectual Property Office’s new website, which allows easier searches of the Lab’s inventions, the latest news, the right staff contacts to help you with disclosures, licensing questions, NDA/MTA requests, and more. https://ipo.lbl.gov/
Joerg Heber has been named Research Integrity Officer to lead the Lab’s Research Compliance Office, which oversees research integrity and conflict of interest matters. He will join the Lab on December 1. https://research.lbl.gov/2020/11/23/welcome-to-joerg-heber-research-integrity-officer/
To better understand electronic behavior in carbon-based materials such as graphene, fullerene, and carbon nanotubes, researchers used the ALS to detect faint overtones in lattice vibrations (phonons)—ripples in intensity that offer clues as to how strongly electrons and phonons are coupled. https://als.lbl.gov/detecting-phonon-overtones-in-correlated-materials/
Chien-Shiung Wu will be honored with a United States Postal Service stamp in 2021. Wu was one of the renowned experimental physicists in the world and a postdoctoral fellow at E.O. Lawrence’s Radiation Lab, which later became Berkeley Lab. She received the first Wolf Prize in physics in 1978. https://diversity.lbl.gov/2015/05/19/chien-shiung-wu-physicist-who-helped-change-the-world/
At the Advanced Light Source, researchers tested the stability of gold nanocrystals under stress. Metallic nanocrystals are widely used in catalysis, electronics, photonics, and sensing applications and have properties that are highly dependent on their sizes, shapes, and structures. https://als.lbl.gov/stress-induced-structural-transformations-in-gold-nanocrystals/
A self-learning algorithm developed by the CAMERA group at the Lab has enabled researchers at the Institut Laue-Langevin, for the first time, to run an autonomous data analysis during a neutron scattering experiment. https://cs.lbl.gov/news-media/news/2020/berkeley-lab-ai-autonomously-steers-data-acquisition-at-neutron-scattering-facility-in-france/
Jennifer Pore, from the Nuclear Sciences Division, researches the fundamental behavior of the heaviest elements on the periodic table. Watch Jennifer’s SLAM presentation to learn more. https://slam.lbl.gov/2020-slam/2020-slam-finalists/jennifer-pore