LBL: A Novel Route to Discovery

[bystander]

A Novel Route to Discovery
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL)
Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD)

The “Discovery” track of Berkeley Lab’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development proposal review encourages bold, highly innovative concepts with strong potential for impact in their fields, independent of divisional programs and lab-wide initiatives. The winning proposals for 2010 are described in a five-part series ...

The complete list of 2010 LDRDs

[bystander]

A Novel Route to Discovery, Part One (February 26, 2010)
“A Plasma-Assisted High-Rate Deposition Concept for Energy Applications”

André Anders heads the Plasma Applications Group in the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division, working with “accelerators” that are rather smaller than the particle colliders and light sources that concern much of the division. Anders typically accelerates ions a few centimeters to coat substrates of various shapes and sizes. Many of these techniques are then scaled-up to industrial dimensions.

[bystander]

A Novel Route to Discovery, Part Two (March 01, 2010)
“Enhanced Subsurface Fluid Characterization Using Joint Hydrological and Geophysical Imaging”

Recovering the last drop of oil, gauging geothermal resources, disposing of toxic and nuclear waste, sequestering captured carbon dioxide – needs like these grow in urgency day by day. To meet them will require better imaging of subsurface structures and the fluids in their pore space.

[bystander]

A Novel Route to Discovery, Part Three (March 02, 2010)
“A Search for a Permanent Electron Electric Dipole Moment”

An electron is a dimensionless point … isn’t it? Yet it has a magnetic dipole moment. Since an electron always has spin (in the quantum sense), it can be viewed classically as a spinning charge with north and south magnetic poles. Does spin also give the electron an electric dipole moment?

[bystander]

A Novel Route to Discovery, Part Four (March 03, 2010)
"Multinozzle Arrays for Single Cell Metabolomics"

Developing new technologies for systems biology is a specialty of Daojing Wang, a principal investigator in the Life Sciences Division. The field of systems biology seeks to understand how the functions of a biological system emerge from the complex interactions of its many constituents.

[bystander]

A Novel Route to Discovery, Part Five (March 04, 2010)
“Surface-Selective Synthesis of Graphene Nanoribbons on Nanowire Templates”

Yuegang Zhang came to the Materials Sciences Division from the Intel Corporation, where researchers have long studied the potential of carbon nanotubes for consumer electronics.