Key points
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory earned a record 22 R&D 100 Awards in 2026, marking the third consecutive year its annual award total has increased.
- ORNL led 18 winning technologies - the most of any organization in this year's competition - and contributed to four additional winners led by partner institutions.
- AWARE, an AI-enhanced technology designed to identify dangerous power grid conditions, also earned a Bronze Special Recognition award in the Market Disruptor category.
- ORNL's M. Parans Paranthaman was named R&D World's 2026 Researcher of the Year.
The Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) earned a new lab record with 22 R&D 100 Awards in 2026 for technologies that advance energy, manufacturing, computing, biotechnology and other fields. ORNL led 18 of the winning technologies and contributed to four additional award-winning projects led by partner institutions.
The annual R&D 100 Awards recognize 100 of the year's most technologically significant products and advancements. This year's winners were selected from 149 finalists, including 28 involving ORNL , representing universities, corporations and government laboratories worldwide.
Among ORNL's winners, AWARE, or Multi-Event Grid Intelligence Platform for Wildfire Prevention and Resilience, also earned a Bronze Special Recognition award in the Market Disruptor category.
In addition, R&D World magazine named ORNL's Parans Paranthaman its 2026 Researcher of the Year , recognizing his work in materials science, energy technology and advanced manufacturing.
"ORNL continues to lead in delivering innovative technologies that move science from the laboratory into real-world impact," said ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer. "This year's R&D 100 Awards highlight our strengths across energy, manufacturing, computing and biotechnology, as well as the value of our partnerships in advancing solutions that benefit the nation."
ORNL's 2026 R&D 100 Award winners
Affordable Efficient Thermoelectric Dishwasher with Enhanced Drying - Developed with Samsung Electronics America, the dishwasher uses a solid-state heat pump and wastewater heat recovery to reduce energy consumption while improving drying performance.
AWARE: Multi-Event Grid Intelligence Platform for Wildfire Prevention and Resilience - Developed with Southern California Edison, the AI-enhanced platform detects and classifies abnormal power grid conditions that can contribute to wildfires, equipment damage and blackouts.
GeoWISE: Geothermal Heat Pump Web-Based Integrated Simulation and Economic Analysis Tool - Developed with Oklahoma State University, the web-based platform rapidly evaluates geothermal feasibility for buildings, campuses and communities by automating energy modeling, simulations and infrastructure sizing.
Microgrid Orchestrator: A Distributed Controller for Networked Microgrids - Developed with New Sun Road and Casa Pueblo, the technology coordinates electricity transfers among connected microgrids to improve reliability and resilience while reducing costs.
Multiplexing Extrusion System (MExS) - Developed with the University of Maine, the additive manufacturing system can simultaneously deposit multiple materials within a single printed bead, doubling deposition throughput while enabling new combinations of structural and functional materials.
ORNL & BMW 22kW Polyphase Wireless Power Transfer System with Rotating Magnetic Fields - Developed with BMW Group, the compact wireless vehicle charging system delivers twice the charging power of current standard wireless systems while occupying 61 percent less space and maintaining more than 95 percent charging efficiency.
PASTREE: Phosphoric Acid Sludge Treatment for Rare Earths Extraction - Developed with the Florida Industrial and Phosphate Research Institute, PASTREE streamlines the recovery of rare earth elements and other valuable materials from phosphate industry by-products, reducing capital and operating costs while providing a more economically viable recovery pathway.
Recycled Composite Oven - Developed with Whirlpool Corporation, the residential oven replaces a traditional steel cavity with fiberglass composites and thermoset polymers to reduce energy demand while maintaining cooking performance.
Terpenes Conversion to Aviation Fuel - Developed with Captis Aire, the technology converts waste terpenes from the wood industry into hydrocarbons that can be blended into sustainable aviation fuel.
Programmable Tri-Structural Isotropic (TRISO) Nuclear Fuel - Developed by ORNL with TRISO-X and Arc Impact, the technology precisely controls the placement of TRISO fuel particles rather than relying on random packing, increasing fuel density and potentially extending fuel cycles.
Electrochemical CO2 Graphitization (ECOG) - The process converts carbon dioxide directly into high-purity graphitic carbon at 550 degrees Celsius, far below the temperatures required for conventional graphite manufacturing, offering a less energy-intensive pathway to battery-grade graphite.
MS-PolyFuel Technology - ORNL researchers developed MS-PolyFuel Technology, a molten-salt system that converts waste polyethylene and other polymers into gasoline- and diesel-range hydrocarbons under mild conditions. The technology uses inexpensive, recyclable salts as both solvent and catalyst, eliminating the need for noble-metal catalysts, organic solvents or external hydrogen.
NEAREST: Neutral Extractant Advanced Rare Earth Separation Technology - The technology uses a new two-ligand approach to separate individual rare earth elements while reducing chemical use, waste and projected processing costs compared with conventional methods.
Algae Composite - Developed with the California Institute of Technology, the low-cost composite uses wastewater algae and agricultural residues to produce material for applications such as lightweight structural panels, packaging and insulation.
Thermophilic One-Pot Bioconversion of PET Waste into Value-Added Aromatics - Developed with the National Laboratory of the Rockies, the process uses an engineered heat-loving microbe to convert polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic waste into a higher-value industrial chemical in a single step.
tSAGE: Thermostable Serine Recombinase Assisted Genome Engineering - This biotechnology platform reduces the time required to add new DNA to heat-loving industrial microbes from about four weeks to about three days, enabling rapid development of biotechnologies for high-temperature manufacturing.
ATLAS-Tx - ATLAS-Tx, an AI technology developed by ORNL and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, predicts gene activity in hard-to-access tissues using data from tissues that are easier to sample.
LuGo: An Enhanced Quantum Phase Estimation Implementation - ORNL developed LuGo, a software framework that makes quantum computing faster and more efficient. LuGo improves a core quantum algorithm by generating circuits more than 50 times faster and reducing quantum gates and circuit depth by more than 30-fold without sacrificing accuracy.
ORNL also contributed to four winning technologies led by partner institutions:
Persistent DynAMICS - Led by Los Alamos National Laboratory with ORNL and other partner organizations, Persistent DynAMICS is a lightweight software platform that enables distributed sensing systems to operate as a unified, responsive network. It integrates with existing sensors, data systems and processing tools as an overlay without requiring hardware replacement or increasing user burden.
Pulsar-Based Timing System: An Alternative Time Reference for Resilient Synchronization - Led by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, with ORNL, the system uses radio signals from rotating neutron stars, or pulsars, to provide a resilient timing reference for power grid applications when satellite-based timing is disrupted.
Pele Suite of Exascale Reacting Flow Codes - The National Laboratory of the Rockies developed Pele in collaboration with ORNL and other national laboratory partners. The open-source simulation software suite uses exascale computing to model complex turbulent reacting flows found in energy, transportation, manufacturing and other applications.
Tritium Migration Analysis Program: TMAP8 - Led by Idaho National Laboratory with ORNL, the open-source computational tool models tritium movement and fuel cycle technologies in fusion energy systems, in which effective tritium management is critical to safety, sustainability and economic viability.
