Award-winning research advances AI applications for environmental cleanup.

The Department of Energy’s Transportation Technologies Office has issued two 2026 Annual Merit Review Awards to researchers from PNNL. Both awards recognize PNNL researchers whose work is reducing the need for critical materials.

PNNL chemist Sarah Saslow received the ACS Rising Star Award for her research supporting environmental cleanup, including work on legacy waste and subsurface contamination.

PNNL’s Center for the Remediation of Complex Sites inducted leaders Director David Peeler, Deputy Director Carolyn Pearce, Operations Director Christian Johnson, and advisors with multidisciplinary subsurface research expertise.

Emilie Purvine, a chief data scientist at PNNL, was elected as a council member at large of the American Mathematical Society.

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.

Paul Humble and Huidong Li honored as Distinguished Inventors of Battelle for earning 14+ U.S. patents through their work at PNNL.

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

Brown University professor and PNNL joint appointee was honored for his exceptional work in applied mathematics.

Jeff Burghardt is the chair of the technical program for the 59th US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium of the American Rock Mechanics Association.

PNNL was recognized for its significant contributions to projects at the Secretary’s Honor Awards Ceremony in Washington, D.C.

PNNL’s Matt Paiss heads NFPA 800, shaping a unified battery safety code for hazards from production to disposal with the aim of safeguarding communities and guiding safe practices worldwide.

Backed by $75,000 in Department of Energy funding from the Office of Electricity, a PNNL researcher works to refine solid-state sodium batteries for the grid.

Materials scientist Dan-Thien Nguyen receives DOE funding to develop flowable zinc battery technology.

Samrat (Sam) Chatterjee, a PNNL chief data scientist and team leader with the Data Sciences and Machine Intelligence group, was co-author of a CSET workshop report on agentic artificial intellilligence

PNNL computational and data scientist Mark Maupin was the team lead for a paper published in the journal Molecules.

Researchers discussed this topic at the 2024 Analog Computing for Science Workshop co-led by Antonino Tumeo.

Geochemist Kevin Rosso named an American Geophysical Union fellow in recognition of his work leading the field of molecular geochemistry.

PNNL researchers earned five Papers of Note, 17 Superior Papers, and one poster award for their environmental remediation, radioactive waste, and nuclear energy-related presentations.

The Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office recognized Livewire’s outstanding teamwork and technical expertise.