ORNL in 2004 received three R&D 100 Awards from R&D Magazine, bringing the Laboratory's total to 119 awards and enabling the Laboratory to maintain a lead over all Department of Energy national labs since the competition began in 1963. The awards are given to the 100 most significant innovations of the year. Sharing ORNL's awards were 15 ORNL researchers and one UT technician.

R&D 100 Award winners (all left to right): (top) Gilbert Brown, Peter Bonnesen, and Baohua Gu; (middle) Greg Engleman, Jackie Mayotte, Randy Howell, Craig Blue, Vinod Sikka, Evan Ohriner, and Puja Kadolkar; (bottom) Vassil Boiadjiev, Eric Hawk, Lal Pinnaduwage, Thomas Thundat, and Dave Hedden.

The ORNL winners are Baohua Gu, Gilbert Brown, Bruce Moyer, Peter Bonnesen, and Paul Schiff for a highly selective, regenerable perchlorate treatment system consisting of a unique, highly specific resin that uses selective ion exchange to trap and break down perchlorate—a chlorineoxygen compound found in solid rocket propellant that disrupts thyroid gland function—and to regenerate itself without getting contaminated so it can be reused; Craig Blue, Puja Kadolkar, Greg Engleman, Randy Howell, Jackie Mayotte, Vinod Sikka, and Evan Ohriner, and others for an advanced heating system for high-performance aluminum forgings, which uses an optimized combination of radiant and convection heating to more quickly process materials—such as heat treating or joining aluminum, steel, titanium, and nickel-based alloy components in automotive and aerospace systems—using less energy than conventional techniques; and Thomas Thundat, Lal Pinnaduwage, Tony Gehl, Vassil Boiadjiev, and Eric Hawk (with David Hedden of UT and others) for the Explosives Vapor Sensor, a compact, low-cost, highly sensitive and specific sensor for detecting and locating plastic-based and other explosives. The Explosives Vapor Sensor may be used for counterterrorism, law enforcement, airport protection, and humanitarian efforts such as landmine removal.

Major General Dennis K. Jackson, director of logistics transformation in ORNL's National Security Directorate, received the National Cargo Security Council's highest award for his "skillful management of the largest, most successful, and efficient transfer of materials and equipment in the shortest time span in military history, as the Director of Logistics and Engineering for all of Southwest Asia, with emphasis on Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom in the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq."

Juske Horita received the 2004 Geochemical Society of Japan Award, in recognition of "his outstanding contributions in the area of experimental studies of stable isotope partitioning at elevated temperatures and pressures."

Stuart Daw, a pioneer in modeling vehicle emission controls, was recognized by the Department of Energy's Office of FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies for his "dedication in creating and coordinating CLEERS (crosscut lean exhaust emission reduction simulation) and leading the Lean NOx Trap Focus Group."

James R. Beene and Steven J. Zinkle have been named UT-Battelle corporate fellows for 2004. Beene, director of ORNL's Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility, was recognized for his leadership in making it "a forefront facility for nuclear science" and for his pioneering work in nuclear structure physics that led to a quantitative understanding of the excitation and decay of radioactive, neutron-rich nuclei. Zinkle is considered an international authority in the study of radiation effects on materials. He has written a series of critical review articles summarizing fundamental radiation effects aspects in a broad range of metals and ceramics used in fission and fusion energy systems.

Sergei Kalinin, Thomas Maier, David Silvermyr, Brian D'Urso, and Vicky D'Urso (Brian's wife) have been named Eugene P. Wigner Fellows.

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