(Press-News.org) The Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering has named the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the recipient of the 2025 SAMPE Organizational Excellence Award. The national award is presented annually in recognition of extraordinary contributions within the advanced materials and processes community across industrial, academic and governmental sectors.
“ORNL is leading the way in carbon fiber and composites research, and we’re helping move these materials from the lab into real-world use. The breakthroughs our teams are making are changing the game for industries like aerospace, automotive, energy, defense and even the nation’s infrastructure,” said Robert Wagner, associate laboratory director for the Energy Science and Technology Directorate.
ORNL is home to state-of-the-art DOE user facilities, such as the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF), the Carbon Fiber Technology Facility and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, home to the world’s first exascale supercomputer, Frontier. These advanced resources enable scientists to push the boundaries of materials science through atomic-level analyses and AI-driven simulations, revolutionizing the field of advanced composite materials.
The MDF, supported by DOE’s Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office, is a nationwide consortium of collaborators working with ORNL to innovate, inspire and catalyze the transformation of U.S. manufacturing. Learn more about working with the MDF.
Key ORNL contributions to composites research and industry transformation include:
Pioneering large-scale additive manufacturing of polymers and composites
Developing low-cost carbon fiber for lightweighting and energy efficiency
Conducting innovative research in high-performance thermoset and thermoplastic composites
Creating extreme-environment composites for aerospace and hypersonic applications
The award was announced during a ceremony Sept. 8 at the Composites and Advanced Materials Expo at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Vlastimil Kunc, section head for composites science and technology at ORNL, accepted the award on behalf of ORNL.
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. — Tina Johnson
END
ORNL receives 2025 SAMPE Organizational Excellence Award
2025-09-11
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
University of Oklahoma researchers aim to reduce indigenous cancer disparities
2025-09-11
OKLAHOMA CITY – Researchers from the University of Oklahoma Health Campus have published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine describing a novel care coordination and communication program and its potential for helping Indigenous people access the lifesaving cancer care that they need.
American Indian and Alaska Native residents in Oklahoma face significant cancer disparities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Oklahoma State Department of Health, ...
Study reveals new evidence, cost savings for common treatments for opioid use disorder in mothers and infants
2025-09-11
Over the last 20 years, substance use-related deaths have more than doubled for women of reproductive age. Overdose deaths are now a leading cause of maternal mortality in the U.S., and in some states, the leading cause.
Still, substantial gaps remain in understanding how different treatment approaches influence the short- and long-term health of mothers and infants, as well as their broader economic impacts over time.
New research published this month in the journal JAMA Pediatrics found that while established medications for opioid use disorder in mothers — buprenorphine and methadone — ...
Research alert: Frequent cannabis users show no driving impairment after two-day break
2025-09-11
Scientists from the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR) at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that, in the largest such study to date, frequent cannabis users did not display impairments in driving performance after at least 48 hours of abstinence. The new findings have implications for public health as well as the enforcement of laws related to cannabis and driving.
Approximately three-quarters of Americans live in a state where cannabis is legally available, and about 15% of Americans ...
Turbulence with a twist
2025-09-11
Turbulence is everywhere, yet much about the nature of turbulence remains unknown. During the last decade, physicists have discovered how fluids in a pipe or similar geometry transition from a smooth, laminar state to a turbulent state as their speed increases. Surprisingly, in the newly emerging consensus, the process could be understood using statistical mechanics, not fluid mechanics, and was mathematically equivalent to the way in which water percolates down through a coffee filter.
In a new twist, UC San Diego researchers Guru K. Jayasingh and Nigel Goldenfeld ...
Volcanic emissions of reactive sulfur gases may have shaped early mars climate, making it more hospitable to life
2025-09-11
While the early Mars climate remains an open question, a new study suggests its atmosphere may have been hospitable to life due to volcanic activity which emitted sulfur gases that contributed to a greenhouse warming effect.
This finding comes from a study published in Science Advances, led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.
Using data from the composition of Martian meteorites, the researchers ran more than 40 computer simulations with varied temperatures, concentrations, and chemistry to estimate how much carbon, nitrogen, and sulfide gases may have been emitted on early Mars.
Instead of the high concentrations ...
C-Path concludes 2025 Global Impact Conference with progress across rare diseases, neurology and pediatrics
2025-09-11
Global regulators, industry leaders, scientists, and patient advocates set near-term commitments on early interception, trial modernization, and patient-first evidence.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2025 —Critical Path Institute® (C-Path) today announced the outcomes of its Global Impact Conference (CGIC), held September 9–11 in Washington, D.C. Over three days of working sessions, regulators, industry leaders, researchers, clinicians, and patient advocates outlined priority actions and next steps to further strengthen collaborations that accelerate drug development across rare diseases, neurology, type-1 diabetes, and pediatrics — with the voices ...
Research exposes far-reaching toll of financial hardship on patients with cancer
2025-09-11
When someone mentions the word “toxicity” in relation to cancer treatment, they’re usually referring to the negative physical side effects and complications that can result from therapies like radiation and chemotherapy. But researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine are raising awareness of another kind of toxicity patients face: financial toxicity, which refers to the stress, expense and instability caused by direct and indirect costs associated with healthcare.
In a recent study, the UChicago researchers ...
The percentage of women who went without a Pap smear for cervical cancer screening increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, from 19% in 2019 to 26% in 2022
2025-09-11
The percentage of women who went without a Pap smear for cervical cancer screening increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, from 19% in 2019 to 26% in 2022, shows survey of almost 2000 US women--and this increase was even more marked in African American women.
In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Global Public Health: https://plos.io/3VsRL1P
Article Title: HPV knowledge and non-adherence to cervical cancer screening before and following ...
AI tools fall short in predicting suicide, study finds
2025-09-11
The accuracy of machine learning algorithms for predicting suicidal behavior is too low to be useful for screening or for prioritizing high-risk individuals for interventions, according to a new study published September 11th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Matthew Spittal of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues.
Numerous risk assessment scales have been developed over the past 50 years to identify patients at high risk of suicide or self-harm. In general, these scales have had poor predictive accuracy, but the availability of modern machine ...
Island ant communities show signs of ‘insect apocalypse’
2025-09-11
From pollinating flowers to enabling decomposition and supporting nutrient cycles, insects’ abundance and biodiversity are critical for maintaining healthy ecosystems. However, recent studies showing population declines have raised alarm about how insects are coping with the modern world. Understanding whether recent observations are part of longer timescale trends can help inform global conservation efforts, and identify the reasons behind the so-called “Insect Apocalypse”.
Published in Science, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology ...