January 2019 – July 2022
The known diversity of bacteria and archaea has expanded by 44% through a collaborative effort involving more than 200 scientists. The work was enabled by the repositories of data and computational tools established and maintained by the Joint Genome Institute, KBase, and NERSC. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/11/10/uncovering-novel-genomes-from-earths-microbiomes/
This year’s winners in a competition to pitch their technology commercialization ideas are: first place, Andrew Haddad (ETA); second place, Dilip Vasudevan (CSA); third place, Reshma Singh (ETA). Each received cash prizes to be applied towards customer research. Watch their video presentations. https://ipo.lbl.gov/pitching/
Mariah Parker of the Chemical Sciences Division works on fundamental gas-phase reactions with actinide complexes to gain insight into the type of chemistry these reactions can do. Watch Parker’s SLAM presentation to find out more. https://slam.lbl.gov/2020-slam/2020-slam-finalists/mariah-parker
Borrowing a page from high-energy physics and astronomy textbooks, a team of physicists and computer scientists at Berkeley Lab has successfully adapted and applied a common error-reduction technique to the field of quantum computing. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/11/05/know-when-to-unfold-em-study-applies-error-reducing-methods-from-particle-physics-to-quantum-computing/
Find out more about DOE’s two-month entrepreneurship training program for national lab research teams at this information session at 10 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 6. DOE provides $75K to cover training time and costs for the course, which will take place next spring. https://calendar.google.com/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=MThkdTIybDI1cGM1NmNpZ3ExMGJ1Yms5OGcgbGJsLmdvdl80czRycmcxMmw2ZXFnNm5jbWMya3QwdmNnZ0Bn&tmsrc=lbl.gov_4s4rrg12l6eqg6ncmc2kt0vcgg%40group.calendar.google.com
Four Lab teams are finalists in the international Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs competition: the Molecular Foundry, Energy Technologies Area, Joint Genome Institute, and Strategic Communications. The Foundry team is also a Top 10 winner. View their team videos. https://pathways.lbl.gov/falling-walls-breakthroughs-of-the-year
A team of scientists has developed a method to design artificial proteins to serve as a framework for the viral antigens. Berkeley Lab scientists collected data at the Advanced Light Source to visualize the atomic structure and determine the designed scaffolds’ dynamics. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/09/30/new-vaccine-development/
The effort to construct GRETA, a cutting-edge spherical array of high-purity germanium crystals that will measure gamma-ray signals to reveal new details about the structure and inner workings of atomic nuclei, has received key approvals needed to proceed toward full build-out. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/11/02/greta-3d-gamma-ray-detector-gets-green-light/
DOE awarded $8.55 million to two Berkeley Lab-led teams to build tools that harness the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning. These include Alex Hexemer’s MLExchange and Andrew Minor’s 4D Camera Distillery, both multidisciplinary projects involving multiple national labs. https://als.lbl.gov/als-and-molecular-foundry-funded-to-lead-the-development-of-new-artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-tools/
Since April, NERSC has allotted 2.5 million node hours on its Cori supercomputer and has provided dedicated HPC resources to support COVID-19 research, such as exploring how protein spike binding hijacks cells, and creating novel treatments and developing bioavailable approaches with AI. https://cs.lbl.gov/news-media/news/2020/nersc-supports-covid-19-pandemic-response/