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Berkeley Lab research associate Rachel Woods-Robinson.Berkeley Lab researcher will bicycle across the country for science

What started off as a joke between two undergraduate physics students will soon culminate in an ambitious endeavor called Cycle for Science, a two-woman cycling and science education team that will traverse the U.S. starting April 17. Berkeley Lab research associate Rachel Woods-Robinson and science journalist Elizabeth Case will visit middle schools across the country, teaching fun science lessons and profiling science teachers, all while serving as female role models with the hope of attracting girls to science.

Woods-Robinson and Case met at UCLA and often joked when their physics classes got tough that they should just throw in the towel and bicycle across the country. But they finished their degrees, and Woods-Robinson joined Berkeley Lab as a research associate in the Materials Science Division last March. She’s been working on synthesis and characterization of p-type transparent conducting materials, which can be used in solar cells and optoelectronics. Case is a science journalist in Davis who plans to start her PhD in engineering in the fall.

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Hubble Telemedical, a start-up company launched by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, was recently acquired by medical diagnostic device manufacturer Welch Allyn. Pictured (from left) are UTHSC’s Edward Chaum, ORNL’s Ken Tobin, Mike Sherman of MB Ventures, and Chuck Witkowski, director of Telemedical Imaging Solutions at Welch Allyn.Collaborative vision, saving sight

Nearly a decade ago, a meeting to explore research collaborations between the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee set the foundation for a company that provides accessible and remote health screenings for patients concerned about diabetic related eye diseases.

That start-up company—launched as AMDx, then called Hubble Telemedical—has been acquired by Welch Allyn, a major medical diagnostic devices manufacturing company that plans to bring the ORNL-UT breakthrough to many more patients.

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See also…

DOE Pulse
  • Number 436  |
  • April 6, 2015
  • Nationwide brainstorm: Workshops focus on nuclear energy innovation

    Energy for Humanity’s Kirsty Gogan at the Boise workshop. At the heart of the modern energy debate is a struggle between the need for more energy globally, while simultaneously achieving lower emissions. Nuclear energy is uniquely positioned to help respond to these dueling necessities, but innovative advancements must overcome considerable barriers. In general all sides of the polarizing topic agree that the nuclear energy sector could benefit from significant innovation.

    DOE's Idaho National Laboratory recently organized more than 120 global energy experts in six cities across the U.S. to discuss innovation in nuclear energy. The goals: gather input from experts to help improve strategy for innovating nuclear technologies and  start an ongoing dialogue among experts and laypersons alike.

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  • Lawrence Livermore deploys world’s highest peak-power laser diode arrays

    In order to drive the diode arrays, LLNL needed to develop a completely new type of pulsed power system, which supplies the arrays with electrical power by drawing energy from the grid and converting it to extremely high-current, precisely shaped electrical pulses. DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has installed and commissioned the highest peak power laser diode arrays in the world, representing total peak power of 3.2 megawatts (MW).

    The diode arrays are a key component of the High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS), which is currently under construction at LLNL. When completed, the HAPLS laser system will be the world’s highest repetition-rate petawatt laser system and will be installed in the European Union’s Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines facility, under construction in the Czech Republic.

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  • A tale of two colliders

    Dennis Perepelitsa in the PHENIX control room. Dennis Perepelitsa, a Brookhaven Lab physicist exploring the mysteries of nuclear physics at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has the distinction of being the first person to earn outstanding Ph.D. thesis awards from both research communities. His Ph.D. work, based on complementary data collected at the PHENIX and ATLAS detectors at these two particle colliders, showcased intriguing findings that have upturned physicists’ understanding of something they thought they knew well—an ongoing mystery that is guiding part of the research programs at both machines now.

    “I’ve been very lucky to work on these two world-class experiments with leaders in the field as my advisors,” Perepelitsa said. “When I started out working on PHENIX/RHIC, we observed some very strange features in the data, and went to the LHC to look for answers to the puzzling results. Now we’re taking what we learned at the LHC and reinvesting that knowledge back into this year’s RHIC run.”

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