The people behind the science at PNNL

The research teams behind the science at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are incredibly imaginative, innovative, dedicated and tenacious. While it may not be in their job descriptions, the people on these teams are striving to transform the world.

Unfortunately, I can only feature a few these individuals here, but I hope they provide a glimpse of the scientists and engineers who are dedicating their careers to research that could help us all live more safely, securely and prosperously.

Take Ruby Leung, a world-renowned leader in creating advanced computer models that predict future climate changes and their impacts. She specializes in translating data from global climate models into knowledge and understanding of regional climate change. She has led efforts to develop regional climate modeling capabilities in the Weather Research and Forecasting model widely adopted by scientists worldwide, and is on the leadership team for DOE’s new global climate model development.

Leung is leading a DOE study of atmospheric rivers, which are the narrow bands of concentrated moisture in the atmosphere that are responsible for a majority of flooding events in the western U.S. Combining measurements from field studies and modeling, Leung and collaborators are working to improve understanding and prediction of atmospheric rivers and how atmospheric particles influence clouds and precipitation.

Leung was also among more than 20 PNNL scientists who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Novella Bridges is a natural leader who has worked on diverse projects during her 15-year career at PNNL. As a research scientist specializing in inorganic chemistry and radiation detection, Novella’s work has focused on reducing diesel emissions in transportation, improving production of hydrogen for fuel cells, and supporting the development of therapeutic agents for cancer treatments. In 2011, Bridges was named one of the nation’s 23 Distinguished Women in Chemistry/Chemical Engineering by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

Today, Bridges is on assignment to Customs and Border Protection headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she provides program management and technical support across CBP’s detection and interdiction technology deployments and operations.

In addition to her scientific and management contributions, Bridges is heavily involved in advancing science education and has mentored many high school, college and graduate school students. She served on the planning committee for Delta High School, the Tri-Cities’ first science, technology, engineering and mathematics — or STEM — high school.

With a driving interest in understanding the fundamental chemistry of materials used in energy storage devices, Jun Liu and his colleagues are working to solve a variety of technical challenges with batteries of many kinds — ranging from large-scale energy storage for electricity generated by renewable sources to batteries for electric vehicles and smaller, rechargeable batteries for cellphones or laptops.

For example, Liu and his colleagues are studying how adding graphene to the metal oxide electrodes in today’s lithium-ion rechargeable batteries can increase how fast a battery can be charged, helping overcome one of this technology’s shortcomings.

Liu also is looking at lithium-sulfur batteries as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries because they can store significantly more energy. The downside, however, is limitations in how many times they can be recharged. Liu helped develop a “hybrid” anode that could increase the life of lithium-sulfur batteries, bringing them one step closer to commercial use. Liu’s innovations are so remarkable that he is among the top one percent of most-cited researchers in the world in the field of engineering, chemistry and materials sciences. He has received 38 U.S. patents, mostly for energy storage technologies.

Arun Devaraj joined PNNL as a post-doctoral researcher at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory — a DOE national user facility on PNNL’s campus — for nearly a year and a half before beginning his role as a senior research scientist in 2012. By 2013, he had already impressed his colleagues and EMSL leadership enough that he was selected to receive that year’s EMSL Director’s Award for creativity in research.

Devaraj is involved in nanoscale characterization of lithium-sodium ion battery materials, catalysts, atmospheric aerosols, metallic alloys, high-strength natural biomaterials and nuclear structural materials. In addition to leading a project for a PNNL chemical imaging initiative, Devaraj assists scientists using EMSL’s specialized capabilities and tools in their efforts to understand structure-property relationships in a wide variety of materials for energy and environment applications.

In 2014, Devaraj was selected to represent lightweight vehicles materials research from EMSL at the National User Facility Organization’s User Science Exhibition for Congress in Washington, D.C.

Leung, Bridges, Liu and Devaraj are just four of the 4,300 people who make PNNL great. Together with their colleagues and collaborators, they are tackling some of the nation’s toughest challenges in energy, the environment and national security. And when amazing people like these apply their imagination and knowledge, they can shape the future.

This story was originally published February 16, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "The people behind the science at PNNL."