As Laboratory Director Steve Ashby pens his last monthly column, he highlights PNNL’s accomplishments with pride and gratitude.

A breakthrough at PNNL could free friction stir from current constraints—and open the door for increased use of the advanced manufacturing technique on commercial assembly lines.

This summer, PNNL hosted the inaugural “As Conductive As Copper” (AC2.0) workshop, fostering a collaborative conversation on the future of the U.S. copper supply chain.

PermitAI’s newly released dataset, NEPATEC 2.0, captures and curates environmental review data for faster, better federal permitting.

Seaweed could be a new source of critical minerals for electronics, vehicles, and buildings.

PNNL researchers continue to deliver high-quality, high-impact research on radioactive waste and nuclear materials management, earning “Papers of Note” and “Superior Paper” awards.

From vehicles and airplanes to solid-phase processing of metals—how Curt Lavender and his team at PNNL solve industry problems with practical ingenuity.

Researchers have developed the first coastal transport model for microplastics to understand how particles move in waterways and coastal currents.

The Low-cost Earth-abundant Na-ion Storage consortium is a major effort to create superior, no-compromise batteries that replace lithium with inexpensive, domestically abundant sodium and use few—if any—critical materials.

The Department of Energy Art of Science contest entry focuses on the extraordinary universe of chemical bond making and breaking under irradiation.

Trace amounts of iron and chromium can incorporate into gibbsite, affecting how the mineral dissolves.

New electees represent research in genomics, grid resilience, coastal ecology, and more.

This research helps predict how coastal forests will respond to future sea level changes which is crucial for protecting these ecosystems.

PNNL researchers showcased subsurface sampling and remediation expertise at the 2025 Federal Remediation Technologies Roundtable.

Experiments focus on catalysts for off-road vehicles that optimize the use of critical minerals while lasting longer and costing less.

The Coastal Observations, Mechanisms, and Predictions Across Systems and Scales: Field, Measurements, and Experiments project established a network of observational field sites across Chesapeake Bay and western Lake Erie.

Due to their inherent variability and complexity over space and time, scientists are challenged to understand the complex interactions among soil, vegetation, and water along coastal terrestrial-aquatic interfaces.

This study characterized above- and below-ground properties to explore the spatial heterogeneity of the terrestrial aquatic interface ecosystem within the Chesapeake Bay area and evaluate the major drivers of soil respiration.

Patricia Paviet has led 100+ international webinars, building a vital global resource for next-generation nuclear energy education and collaboration.

PNNL researchers received an award from the Materials, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) for a publication on friction riveting.