Landmark photosynthesis gene discovery boosts plant height, advances crop science

A team of scientists with two DOE Bioenergy Research Centers—the Center for Bioenergy Innovation at ORNL and the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign—identified a chimera gene in a poplar tree that enhances photosynthesis and can boost tree height by about 30% in the field and by as much as 200% in the greenhouse. The gene, which scientists named Booster, also increased the biomass of Arabidopsis, or thale cress, indicating the potential for higher yields from other crops if successful on a larger scale. Read More

SCIENCE WATCH

Harvesting plant data with robotics, sensors, and advanced computing—Scientists in BESSD and ORNL’s Manufacturing Science Division recently demonstrated an autonomous robotic field monitoring, sampling, and data-gathering system that could accelerate understanding of interactions among plants, soil, and the environment. The SMART Plant Field-Series platform targets seamless connections between observations gathered in the field and the laboratory. Data would inform real-time models to both accelerate plant science and for smart field management. Read more

ORBIT AI Foundation model wins HPCwire awards—The Oak Ridge Base AI Foundation Model for Earth System Predictability, or ORBIT, was recognized with HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards at the 2024 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC24), in Atlanta, Georgia. ORBIT is a groundbreaking AI spatiotemporal transformer model with 113 billion parameters that could enable fast, cheap and highly accurate weather forecasts. Powered by 49,152 AMD GPUs on the Frontier supercomputer, ORBIT achieved a sustained computing performance of 1.6 exaflops. Read more

ORNL DAAC hosts BioSCape data workshop—Michele Thornton and Rupesh Shrestha hosted an ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) workshop for scientists and land managers in South Africa to help them access and utilize data from a new first-of-its kind repository of biodiversity data along South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region. The data hosted by the ORNL DAAC are from a NASA field campaign called BioSCape that used airborne imaging spectroscopy and LiDAR to capture observations across coastal and marine environments. The Cape Floristic region contains the world’s greatest variety of plant species in a temperate area and the third largest number of unique marine species. Read more

New method improves extreme weather predictions for South Florida—A hybrid statistical technique promises more accurate weather predictions and infrastructure planning for local communities in South Florida. The project led by Florida State University focuses on the challenges of forecasting heavy rainfall and extreme heat, and incorporates research by ORNL’s Shih-Chieh Kao. Read more

STAFF SPOTLIGHT

Tuskan delivers Distinguished Scientist Fellow lecture—Gerald Tuskan received the DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellow award at a ceremony at DOE headquarters on November 19. Tuskan delivered a lecture following the ceremony describing his career and collaborative science achievements. Watch the lecture and Read more

Guss receives Agile BioFoundry Technology Commercialization honor—Adam Guss received the 2024 Agile BioFoundry Technology Commercialization Award, recognizing the impact of his science and technology achievements for the biomanufacturing industry by securing the most technology licenses in FY24 for the SAGE system. The Agile BioFoundry is a consortium of seven national labs that work closely with industry and academia to resolve challenges in support of a robust bioeconomy.

Rathore wins ORNL Early Career Award—Saubhagya Rathore was selected for a FY25 Laboratory Directed Research and Development Early Career Award. He will explore the role of density-driven dynamics in coastal hydro-biogeochemistry. The project will use the award-winning Advanced Terrestrial Simulator—coupled with other models and machine learning—to perform coastal watershed modeling that captures complex, density-driven dynamics and their effects on the cycling of carbon, nutrients, and oxygen. By transforming high-resolution insights into scalable models, this research aims to enhance our ability to depict the dynamic and interconnected nature of coastal interfaces in regional and Earth system models. Rathore will also join ORNL’s Early Career Development Program as part of the newest cohort.

ORNL wins multiple DOE Geospatial Week poster awards—ORNL entries in DOE’s Geospatial Week Poster Competition in November garnered multiple awards, including bringing home the Best Geospatial Program recognition for the third year in a row. ORNL won first and third places in the Cartography category and first, second, and third places in the Mission Alignment category. The research teams included the directorate’s Bryan Bozeman, Chris DeRolph, Molly Foley, Ganesh Ghimire, Shih-Chieh Kao, Paul Matson, Gbadebo Oladosu, Tom Ruggles, and Debjani Singh.

2024 YEAR IN REVIEW

From groundbreaking research to impactful discoveries, 2024 was another big year for ORNL's biologists and environmental scientists. Take a look back at some of the highlights.

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