The National Academy of Engineering named three Berkeley Lab researchers to this year’s class of 84 new members and 22 foreign associates. Robert Budnitz, Gerbrand Ceder and Katherine Yelick were elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Berkeley Lab-developed tech enabling energy-saving roofs, long-lived batteries, better data from X-ray experiments, safer drinking water, and reduced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have received 2016 R&D 100 awards.

For the first time, a new tool developed at Berkeley Lab allows researchers to interactively explore the hierarchical processes that happen in the brain when it is resting or performing tasks. Scientists also hope that the tool can shed some light on how neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s spread throughout the brain.

Particle accelerators are on the verge of transformational breakthroughs—and advances in computing power and techniques are a big part of the reason. Long valued for their role in scientific discovery and in medical and industrial applications such as cancer treatment, food sterilization and drug development, particle accelerators, unfortunately, occupy a lot of space and carry

Around the world—from tundra to tropical forests, and a variety of ecosystems in between—environmental researchers have set up micrometeorological towers to monitor carbon, water, and energy fluxes, which are measurements of how carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapor and energy (heat) circulate between the soil, plants and atmosphere. Most of these sites have been continuously collecting

Scientists at Berkeley Lab will lead or play key roles in developing 11 critical research applications for next-generation supercomputers as part of DOE’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP). The ECP announced Sept. 7 that it has selected 15 application development proposals for full funding—of which Berkeley Lab will lead two and support four others—and seven proposals for “seed” funding, three of which will be led by Berkeley Lab, which will also support two others.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it will invest $16 million over the next four years to accelerate the design of new materials through use of supercomputers. Two four-year projects—including one team led by Berkeley Lab — will leverage the Lab’s expertise in materials and take advantage of superfast computers at DOE national laboratories to develop software for designing new functional materials to revolutionize applications in alternative and renewable energy, electronics, and more.

As the number of data centers continues to increase in the United States, the good news is that they are becoming much more energy efficient. A new report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found that electricity consumption by data centers nationwide, after rising rapidly for more than a decade, started to plateau in 2010 and has remained steady since, at just under 2 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption.

Berkeley Lab researchers in the Computing Sciences Division have developed a new mathematical framework that allows researchers to capture fluid dynamics at unprecedented detail. The work could be used in a range of applications, like optimizing the shape of a propeller blade and the ejection of ink droplets in printers.

Scientists have devised a way to build a “quantum metamaterial”—an engineered material with exotic properties not found in nature—using ultracold atoms trapped in an artificial crystal composed of light.