Senior Chemist

SRNL awarded AI-powered environmental cleanup projects through DOE's Genesis Mission. Savannah River National Laboratory has been awarded funding supported by the Department of Energy's groundbreaking Genesis Mission initiative, leveraging SRNL's advanced artificial intelligence to drive a paradigm shift in environmental restoration and revitalization. The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative led by the U.S. Department of Energy, which is building the world's most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia, and philanthropy, it is accelerating breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery, and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems, and advanced scientific instruments. Genesis Mission exemplifies the spirit of discovery and collaboration that defines SRNL. Together, we are advancing the solutions that will define the next era of innovation. As part of DOE's landmark Genesis Mission, the SRNL-led projects directly support critical national security and environmental stewardship goals for both DOE's Office of Environmental Management and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). By uniting over 70 years of expertise in nuclear sciences with its unique, site-specific datasets, the laboratory is developing first-of-its-kind AI models. These tools are designed to solve complex challenges in environmental remediation, waste management, and infrastructure resilience - ultimately safeguarding national security assets while yielding over $150 billion in lifecycle cleanup savings. "SRNL has built decades of expertise tackling complex environmental cleanup and nuclear materials challenges," said SRNL Director Johney Green. "As we embark on the Genesis Mission, we are eager to harness this depth of expertise in collaboration with our partners across national laboratories, industry, and academic institutions. By integrating our longstanding scientific knowledge with emerging AI capabilities, we are accelerating discovery in ways that will strengthen our national security, environmental, and energy missions." SRNL will lead the following projects: The VITA-SCALE project, led by SRNL's Nathan Morgan, leverages physics-based AI to accurately predict how nuclear waste behaves during vitrification at full scale. Vitrification, the process of converting waste materials into glass, is used by DOE for long-term storage. VITA-SCALE overcomes the limitations of small-lab analyses and steady-state models, and accelerates DOE cleanup, reduces costs, and improves safety with plans to open-source its models for broader innovation. The SCOPE project, led by SRNL's Tom Danielson, uses artificial intelligence, chemistry and physics-based modeling to more accurately predict the behavior of radioactive liquid waste during treatment. This improved understanding can help prevent costly process disruptions, such as unexpected solids formation, reducing operational risk while improving process efficiency. SRNL will also partner on a project led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and a project led by Vanderbilt University. The goal of the Phase I RFA awards is to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and scale. Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, while rigorously evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation, or generate new scientific insights. SRNL Director Johney Green and computational scientist Tom Danielson attended the Genesis Mission Summit on July 22, 2026. Savannah River National Laboratory is a multi-program federally funded research and development center managed and operated by Battelle Savannah River Alliance for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management. EM transforms the nation's environmental liabilities into opportunities for innovation, job creation, and economic growth, while ensuring safe, secure and prosperous communities across America. For more information, visit energy.gov/em. Media contact. Type of article.

SRNL and partners advance 3D printing with new CRAFT technology. Savannah River National Laboratory researchers, along with university and other national laboratory partners, invented a new technology that uses light to fine-tune material properties such as strength, flexibility and durability during the 3-D printing process. March 17, 2026 March 17, 2026 3 min minute read time Digital images of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa were used to create printed copies where the shades of gray represent different levels of crystallinity, showing how the CRAFT method can precisely control a material's physical properties. Credit: Sandia National Laboratories. Breakthrough research enables precise control of material properties during manufacturing. AIKEN, S.C. - Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) researchers, along with university and other national laboratory partners, invented a new technology that uses light to fine-tune material properties such as strength, flexibility and durability during the 3-D printing process. Typically, 3D printed parts share the same set of characteristics throughout. "We've never had this level of control over these materials before," said Sam Leguizamon, SRNL researcher and project lead for the technology, called CRAFT, or Lithographic Crystallinity Regulation in Additive Fabrication of Thermoplastics. "Being able to direct how polymers form during printing gives us a powerful new tool not just for manufacturing, but for advancing the entire field of polymer science." Using the CRAFT method, a soft-bodied turtle was 3D printed with varying degrees of flexibility and physical properties. Credit: Sandia National Laboratories. SRNL, the sole national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management, hopes to leverage its new Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative facility to further develop CRAFT and other related additive manufacturing technologies alongside academic and industry partners. Leguizamon played a pivotal role in uncovering the groundbreaking science behind CRAFT during his tenure at Sandia National Laboratories. There, his team made a remarkable discovery: by changing light intensity during printing, they could produce materials with varying levels of clarity. Looking deeper, Leguizamon found that these changes in clarity align with shifts in the material's molecular structure, which normally required chemical methods or high-temperature processing. Leguizamon continued his work on the CRAFT project after arriving at SRNL. He drafted a clear narrative to refine CRAFT's mechanics and to optimize the process. He also formed partnerships with the University of Texas at Austin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. "CRAFT represents a shift in how we think about manufacturing plastic parts," said Patrick Garcia, SRNL associate lab director. "Instead of accepting materials as they come off the printer, we can now design them with specific material properties for a specific purpose from the very beginning of the process." The University of Texas team recently demonstrated a real-world application of CRAFT by printing a detailed model of a human hand. The printed hand mimics the characteristics of skin, bones, ligaments, and tendons, all using a single material. Models like this could be used to teach medical students or to help develop advanced protective gear. CRAFT offers a new pathway for creating advanced thermoplastics tailored to specific applications. Industries such as aerospace, biomedicine and energy systems could use this technology designed directly into 3D printed parts. This research was supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Engineering and Technology Maturation, which develops and matures advanced manufacturing capabilities for the nuclear security enterprise. -Contributor: Federica Staton Email Updates To receive the latest news and updates about the Office of Environmental Management, submit your e-mail address.