2006 News Items

1/02/2006 - Dr. Terry Hazen Selected as ERSD Distinguished Fellow: The Environmental Remediation Sciences Division (ERSD) of the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) has selected Dr. Terry Hazen from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to be the first recipient of ERSD’s Distinguished Scientist Fellowship. Each of BER’s four divisions is making these competitive awards to reward and encourage continued scientific excellence in support of BER programmatic goals. BER’s Distinguished Fellows are expected to help advance and sustain scientific excellence in biological and environmental research at the National Laboratories. Dr. Hazen has worked within the DOE system for 20 years, first at the Savannah River National Laboratory, and most recently with LBNL. He has conducted pioneering research on subsurface microbiology and microbial bioremediation of solvents and metals. Dr. Hazen will receive $250,000 per year for up to five years while employed at LBNL.

2005 News Items

3/11/2005 - Allison Campbell Chosen as EMSL Director, Receives ACS Award: On Friday, March 11, 2005, Dr. Allison Campbell was named the Director of the EMSL. Dr. Campbell has been serving as Interim EMSL Director for the past eight months. Prior to her assignment as Interim Director, Dr. Campbell served for four years as EMSL's Deputy Director, then Associate Director for Scientific Resources....[more]

3/1/2005 - EMSL Launches Grand Challenges in Biogeochemistry and Membrane Biology:The William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) has initiated two scientific Grand Challenges. Both the Biogeochemistry Grand Challenge and the Membrane Biology Grand Challenge are complex, large-scale scientific and engineering problems with broad scientific and environmental or economic impacts whose solution can be advanced by applying a wide variety of scientific techniques and resources....[more]

1/15/2005 - EMSL Scientists and Collaborators Receive StorCloud Award for Active Storage System at the 2004 Supercomputer Conference: Computational scientists from the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), collaborators from Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), and other commercial partners received the "Most Innovatice Use of Storage" award at the Supercomputing Conference (SC2004) in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in November 2004. ....[more]

2004 News Items

7/20/2004 - ORNL Scientists Win “R&D 100” Award for Unique Perchlorate Treatment Technology: The Highly Selective, Regenerable Perchlorate Treatment System, developed by Baohua Gu, Gilbert Brown, Bruce Moyer, Peter Bonnesen, and Paul Schiff of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Spiro Alexandratos of the University of Tennessee has won a 2004 R&D 100 Award. These awards are presented annually by R&D Magazine in recognition of the year's most significant technological innovations....[more]

9/27/2004 - “Conan the Bacterium’s” Secrets Illuminated: Insights into How Deinococcus radiodurans Resists Extreme Doses of Radiation: Cultures of the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand up to a million Rads (10,000 Grays) of ionizing radiation, roughly 2000 times the dose that would be expected to kill 50% of a population of humans exposed to it. Exactly what mechanisms Deinococcus radiodurans uses to repair all the breaks in its DNA caused by radiation at this dose level remains poorly understood but recent work by Michael Daly, of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD, is providing some intriguing clues....[more]

12/4/2004 - New Method Probes the Chemistry of Living Bacterial Cells: ERSD-funded researchers have found a new way to study individual living bacterial cells and analyze their chemistry. The scientists used high-energy X-ray fluorescence measurements to obtain chemical analyses and produce chemical “maps” of individual free-floating and surface-attached cells of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens.... [more]

2003 News Items

12/3/03 - Science Publishes the Genome Sequence of Geobacter, a Microbe that Precipitates Radionuclides and Metals: The genome sequence of the bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens will be published in the December 12 issue of the journal Science. The genetic code of this tiny microorganism may hold the answers to some of DOE’s most difficult cleanup problems and to generating power through bio-based energy sources....[more]

11/26/03 - EMSL Supercomputer Ranked Number 5 in Top 500: On November 16, 2003, the Top 500 list of fastest supercomputers in the world was released. The new Hewlett-Packard (HP) supercomputer that was recently installed at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) in Richland, Washington, was ranked number 5 in the top 500 list...[more]

11/5/03 - Subsurface Microbial Community Stimulated to Immobilize Uranium Plume: The first demonstration of a feasible process for the in situ immobilization of uranium as a bioremediation strategy was conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Massachusetts, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee, and several other institutions.... [more]

10/15/03 - Kristin Bowman-James to Receive American Chemical Society Midwest Award: The 2003 Midwest Regional Award of the American Chemical Society will be presented to Dr. Kristin Bowman-James, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kansas.... [more]

8/6/03 - Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research (NABIR) Highlighted in the San Francisco Chronicle : The July 14th edition of the San Francisco Chronicle featured an article in the Science section devoted to bioremediation research funded by the Office of Science NABIR program. “Mining bacteria’s appetite for toxic waste—Researchers try to clean nuclear sites with microbes,” was authored by well-known science writer, David Perlman. The article noted that scientists are exploiting the “unusual appetites” of some microbes as a way to clean up nuclear sites....[more]

8/6/03 - Theoretical Modeling of High-Level Radioactive Waste Components Featured on Cover of Journal of Physical Chemistry: Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory (NDRL) have developed a new computational model of the interactions between solvent molecules and negatively charged ions (anions), particularly those composed of a central atom surrounded by multiple oxygen atoms (oxyanions).... [more]

6/30/03 - SREL Researcher Uses Treerings to Unravel Contaminant History : New research shows that trees collected from contaminated areas contain a "signature" of the metals within their annual rings, the timing of which corresponds well with historic information on the timing of contaminant input, as long as the tree has not been exposed to acutely toxic levels of contaminant ..... [more]

6/4/2003 - Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research Highlighted at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Microbiology: The ASM meeting, which drew over 15,000 attendees, was held in Washington, D.C., on May 19-22. NABIR funded research was presented in six invited talks and over 45 additional scientific papers.....[more]

5/21/2003 - EMSL Instrumentation Used in First Study of Lyme Disease Proteome: Researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the State University of New York, Stony Brook, used high-resolution, phase capillary liquid chromatography coupled with MS/MS analysis to conduct an initial survey of the entire protein complement of three strains of the organism that causes Lyme disease....[more]

5/10/2003 - Environmental Management Science Program Holds its 2003 Principal Investigators’ Workshop: The Environmental Management Science Program held its 2003 Principal Investigators’ Workshop on May 6th - 7th, 2003, at the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ....[more ]

5/7/2003 - ERSD Researcher Elected to the National Academy of Sciences : Professor James Tiedje, Distinguished Professor of microbiology and Director of the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences...[more]

4/2/2003 - National Award in Analytical Chemistry to ERSD Scientist : The American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Analytical Chemistry has announced the recipients of its 2003 awards. J. Michael Ramsey of Oak Ridge National Laboratory....[more]

3/26/2003 - Sixth Annual DOE Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research Program Grantee/Contractor Meeting: The 6^th annual NABIR grantee/contractor meeting was held in Warrenton, VA, on March 17-19, 2003. Over 140 attendees participated.....[more]

3/5/2003 - EMSL Users to Receive 2003 American Chemical Society Awards : Four users of the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory , located at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, have been chosen to receive awards from the American Chemical Society for 2003 ....[more]

2/26/2003 - EMSP Researcher Elected to National Academy of Engineering: Linda M. Abriola, the Horace Williams King Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor has been elected to The National Academy of Engineering.....[more]

2/26/2003 - Vehicle Emissions Research at EMSL Leads to 2003 Federal Laboratory Consortium Award: Scientists from the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory , will receive a 2003 Federal Laboratory Consortium award for an engine exhaust aftertreatment system....[ more]

2/26/2003 - US-European Union Short Course on Environmental Biotechnology BER and the European Commission (EC) jointly sponsored a short course for early career scientists on the topic of Molecular Biology for the Environment. The course, which was held at the University of Madrid....[more]

1/29/2003 - Protein Structures Provide Evidence for Mechanism of Myxoma Virus Infection : The work shows how this viral protein mimics the structure of a host cell protein to defeat the defense mechanisms of the organism being infected by the virus....[more]

1/28/2003 - ERSD Scientists Rank among Highly Cited Researchers in Environment Studies: The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) has released its January 2003 list of 247 highly cited researchers whose work has formed or changed the course of research in the environmental sciences.....[more]

2002 News Items

7/29/2002 - Designer Molecules Set the Trend for Advancing Science : Researchers at the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a powerful computer program for designing new moleculars that bind with metal ions....[more]

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