Berkeley Lab Press

“Creation of a new element is an extremely rare feat. It’s exciting to be a part of the process and to have a promising path forward,” says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Jacklyn Gates.

The future of total synthesis From structure confirmation to methodology improvements, making complex natural products has driven innovation in organic synthesis for decades. Nina Notman looks at its current state, with threats fr...

“Nature holds a wealth of untapped natural products, and new tools in synthesis and synthetic biology are unlocking their potential for medicine, food, and fuels," says
@berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Nigel Mouncey.

America’s Biggest Oil Field Is Turning Into a Pressure Cooker Drillers’ injection of wastewater is creating mayhem across the Permian Basin, raising concern about the future of fossil-fuel production there.

"Newly tested desalination technologies are demonstrating great promise in meeting the challenges facing oil producing companies in Texas and New Mexico," says
@berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Peter Fiske.

via @wsj.com

Historic search for 'huge missing piece' of the universe reveals new secrets of particle physics Scientists hunted dark matter and solar neutrinos with one of the largest experiments yet. While the neutrinos likely appeared, dark matter results couldn't be confirmed.

“Seeing these neutrino interactions is a pivotal milestone. It showcases LZ’s ability to detect signals of cosmic origin," says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Dan Kodroff, LZ analysis co-lead.

Why the Bay Area is key to the new U.S. push to win the international AI race The Genesis Mission is mobilizing Bay Area labs to accelerate AI research and chip development to blunt China’s rise in the sector.

"AI will increase the productivity of scientists," says
@berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Jonathan Carter. "The only debate is, by how much: Is it by a factor of 10 or 1,000?”

NVIDIA GPUs enable large-scale quantum chip modeling on supercomputer Researchers used 7,000+ NVIDIA GPUs on Perlmutter to create the most detailed simulation of a quantum microchip to date.

“This unprecedented simulation is a critical step forward to accelerate the design and development of quantum hardware. More powerful quantum chips will unlock new capabilities and open up new avenues in science,” says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's
Bert de Jong.

New, more stable qubits could simplify dreamed-of quantum computers Advance underscores the importance of materials science for quantum computing

"Building superconducting qubits with over a microsecond lifetime is a heroic effort and establishes the solid foundations for next-generation superconducting quantum computing technology," says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Bert de Jong.

Biotech markets aren't picking up just yet Despite some recent eye-catching deals, the financing environment is still sluggish

“Industrial #biotech is not performing well either," says
@berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Deepti Tanjore. "We have overemphasized innovation at the microbial level, neglecting innovation in scale-up and distributed domestic manufacturing.”

@rowanwalrath.bsky.social

"With AI, synthetic biology can become computationally driven, rather than intuition driven, where algorithms design DNA, enzymes, & entire biosynthetic pathways before they’re ever built," says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Hector Garcia Martin.

The AI Industry’s Scaling Obsession Is Headed for a Cliff Huge AI infrastructure deals assume that algorithms will keep improving with scale. They may not.

"Big models are not the only way forward, " says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Bert de Jong. "Learning smarter and piece by piece is the path forward."

AI is dreaming up millions of new materials. Are they any good? Critics slammed attempts by Google, Microsoft and Meta to speed up materials discovery. But behind the hype, there is progress.

"Every breakthrough in science invites both excitement and scrutiny," says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov 's Kristin Persson. "There is tremendous promise in applying data-driven AI and machine learning to the discovery, direction, and optimization of materials."

Bert de Jong, Director of the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA) at Berkeley Lab Bert de Jong, Director of the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA) at Berkeley Lab, is interviewed by Yuval Boger. Bert describes how the center develops superconducting, trapped-ion, and neutral-atom te...

Thanks Yuval Boger, the Quantum Superposition Guy, for hosting me on your podcast discussing the future of quantum computing and the quantum research going on at the Quantum Systems Accelerator and @berkeleylab.lbl.gov

podcast.yboger.com/2025/09/01/b...

The New Quantum Era - innovation in quantum computing, science and technology | From Exascale to Quantum Advantage with Bert de Jong In this episode, Sebastian Hassinger sits down with Bert de Jong, a leading computational chemist and Director of the Quantum Systems Accelerator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They expl...

“National labs bring together deep science, advanced engineering, and a culture of collaboration that’s essential at this stage of quantum’s development,” said @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Bert de Jong.

GRETA: World's most powerful detector to decode nuclear 'fingerprints' With its incredible sensitivity, it promises to decode the “fingerprints” of atomic nuclei and reveal their secrets.

“Our goal was to make the best high-resolution, high-efficiency gamma-ray detector we possibly could, so we can answer big questions about the nature of matter and fundamental forces,” said @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Paul Fallon.

Innovative Membrane Technology Promises Access to Clean Water A widely used method to remove dissolved salts and other contaminants from water is reverse osmosis (RO), which uses ultra-thin membranes that enable water under pressure to pass through the membrane ...

"From farms to cities, turning tough-to-treat water into a #CleanWater 🚰 supply could be life-changing. Proving it works in the real world is how we solve water scarcity for good," says Berkeley Lab's Peter Fiske. 💧🌱🌍🧪

A Surprising Twist Puts Desalination Plants at the Bottom of the Ocean. Here’s Why Companies are experimenting with deep-sea tech to produce cheaper fresh water

"These new approaches to ocean desalination all utilize small, distributed, manufactured units, rather than a single large-scale custom-built facility, which cuts manufacturing costs and speed deployment of these systems," says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov 's Peter Fiske.

A Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough May Be Closer Than You Think Clean energy from nuclear fusion may soon be commercial. But leaders around the world have done little to prepare.

"From high-performance magnets to advanced lasers & simulations, we're engaged with U.S. industry, like TAE, TypeOne Energy & Realta Fusion to develop technologies & insights to help unlock the potential of fusion energy" -
@berkeleylab.lbl.gov’s Cameron Geddes.

Energy Dept. Unveils Supercomputer That Merges With A.I.

The new supercomputer, which uses NVIDIA chips tailored for A.I. calculations, could be the Energy Department's biggest resource for tasks like training A.I. models, says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Jonathan Carter. @energygov.bsky.social

Meta releases new data set, AI model aimed at speeding up scientific research The Open Molecules 2025 project required 6 billion compute hours in Meta data centers, and could make complex chemistry calculations 10,000 times faster.

“We’re talking about two orders of magnitude more compute than any kind of academic data set that’s ever been made,” says @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Sam Blau who worked with Meta on the project. “It’s going to dramatically change how people do computational chemistry.”

A Toxic Pit Could Be a Gold Mine for Rare-Earth Elements

“Water is the ore body of the 21st century,” said @berkeleylab.lbl.gov’s Peter Fiske. “Technology now is allowing us to pick through the garbage piles of wastewater and pick out the high-value items.”

Making Science: Inside Lawrence Berkeley National Lab - Make: Inside the amazing, make-anything fabrication shops at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

“That’s the beauty of being in a place like Berkeley Lab: If I have a question, I’ll go next door to ask someone, and in many cases, it’ll be a leading expert on the subject," said @berkeleylab.lbl.gov's Arian Gashi.

The Oil Patch’s ‘Manhattan Project’: How to Fix Its Gargantuan Water Problem Oil companies wrestling with huge amounts of wastewater have bold plans to turn the nuisance into a valuable product.

"One of the most promising new ways to treat produced water from oil & gas operations is with new membrane technology which transforms the wastewater into a usable resource for industrial reuse or agriculture," says
@berkeleylab.lbl.gov 's Peter Fiske.

wsj.com/business/ene... via
@wsj.com

Ultracool microscopy yields a sharper look at proteins After years of frustration, researchers learn how to sharpen molecular images with liquid helium

"Not only will it provide sharper details of proteins and other molecules imaged with cryo-EM," says
@berkeleylab.lbl.gov 's Peter Denes, "but it should enable microscopists to image even proteins roughly half the size of what is currently possible."

ALS-United: Steve Rossi, Daniela Leitner, and Andrew Netto ALS-United is an opportunity to meet the people collaborating at the Advanced Light Source and the ALS Upgrade Project. Hear firsthand how team science enables the cutting-edge research of today and b...

ALS-United: we speak with Steve Rossi (ALS Deputy for Business Operations), Daniela Leitner (Engineering Division Director, ALS-U System Lead for Removal & Installation), and Andrew Netto (ALS-U Deputy for Operations). @berkeleylab.lbl.gov als.lbl.gov/als-united-s...

Renewing The Mandate To Safeguard The Energy Grid The US power grid is highly susceptible to cyberattacks, EMP, natural disasters, and physical threats, all of which could have disastrous results.

Research by @berkeleylab.lbl.gov for @energygov.bsky.social shows that data centers' power consumption has tripled in the last ten years and may triple again by 2028.