Thousands of contributions to environment, energy, and biological sciences commemorated
News Release
July 27, 2017 
RICHLAND, Wash. - A unique user facility that has helped scientists around the world shape their ideas and obtain answers to some of the most challenging scientific questions is celebrating 2 decades of achievement next week.
Scientists, community leaders and others will gather Aug. 3-4 to celebrate the achievements of the 1st 20 years of EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a D.O.E. Office of Science User Facility located at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Lab in Richland, Wash.
Using EMSL resources, scientists worldwide have authored in excess of 6,000 scientific manuscripts which have garnered in excess of 200,000 citations as other scientists build on each other's work. Those findings have helped chart the course of subsequent studies and shape the direction of current endeavors.
EMSL was suggested by former PNNL director William R. Wiley to explore connections at the molecular scale between the physical, mathematical and life sciences. While much of its initial focus was on environmental challenges such as the fate and transport of contaminants beneath the surface, the laboratory's scope has grown remarkably. EMSL resources have contributed to important findings about the environment, atmospheric processes, biofuels and bioproducts, microbiology and life sciences, catalysis, energy storage, clean fuels and other topics.
A constant throughout EMSL's years has been the creation of new ways to monitor what's happening at the molecular level in a range of materials and organisms. One of the richest areas of exploration has been in a field known as subsurface science. Much of the leading work on the use of microbes to transform and sequester radioactive waste and heavy metals in soils and deep sediments has been done by scientific users who have come together through EMSL collaborations. Such research has opened up other areas, such as a deeper understanding of microbial communities that are important for the production of biofuels and bioproducts.
EMSL scientists have led the way to develop new ways of looking at whole proteins in live cells of bacteria and other organisms, yielding a broad view of how proteins actually carry out their functions in real time. And EMSL scientists have worked with colleagues around the country to solve the structures of proteins that contribute to infectious disease - a critical step for the creation of vaccines or better treatments someday.
In the area of energy storage, scientific users have made some of the best real-time observations ever made about what's actually happening to the materials inside a battery as it operates. The findings about battery chemistry, including how a battery loses energy as it stores and delivers its charge, have contributed to our knowledge about how to develop longer-lasting, higher-capacity batteries.
One of EMSL's most widely-known contributions is the creation of NWChem, an open-source high-performance-computing software package that helps scientists understand problems in the realm of molecular chemistry and biochemistry. The software, which helps scientists simulate molecular structures and reaction mechanisms, has been downloaded in excess of 70,000 times.
The EMSL facility covers an area bigger than 4 football fields, filled with premier instruments for molecular environmental science and with a production computing system, all designed to help scientists answer important questions about the environment, biology and energy. But more important than the instruments is the scientific expertise and leadership EMSL personnel offer to users. EMSL is home to in excess of 150 scientists, many with unique expertise. Collectively these scientists have centuries' worth of knowledge about what type of molecule might yield its secrets to, say, an NMR probe vs. a more conventional mass spectrometer, or when a measure of an organism's proteins will yield more meaningful information than a measure of its DNA.
By working with both experimental and computational scientists who have come from in excess of 40 nations as well every state in the United States, EMSL personnel have a feel for the pulse of research in a way that few user facilities possess. Every visitor brings unique knowledge and questions that remain part of the EMSL brain trust long after they depart, informing subsequent explorations.
"Scientific user facilities like EMSL bring together the resources, the tools, and most importantly the people to solve some of the most difficult scientific challenges," said Liyuan Liang, EMSL director. "Scientists from academic, industry and labs across the world join forces to tackle problems that otherwise might go unaddressed simply because they are too complex and challenging for any one scientist. We bring teams of scientists together to enable discovery."
One of the most exciting areas for EMSL now is its working relationships with other D.O.E. Office of Science User Facilities, including the Joint Genome Institute and the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility. Each offers unique resources, and for certain questions the suite of facilities offers an uncommonly broad view of certain scientific challenges.
The agenda next week includes a scientific symposium with a talk by X. Sunney Xie, a former EMSL scientist and now Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, who will speak about "life at the single molecule level."
Also next week is a scientific meeting on "Multi-omics for microbiomes." In excess of 150 scientists from around the world will gather in Pasco, Wash. Aug. 1-3 to discuss the activity of communities of microbes and their importance everywhere from our bodies to the planet. The meeting is sponsored both by EMSL, as its yearly meeting for its users, and by the laboratory's Microbiomes in Transition initiative.
Tags: EMSL
EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Lab, is a D.O.E. Office of Science User Facility. Located at Pacific Northwest National Lab in Richland, Wash., EMSL offers an open, collaborative environment for scientific discovery to researchers around the world. Its integrated computational and experimental resources enable researchers to realize important scientific insights and create new technologies. Follow EMSL on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Interdisciplinary teams at Pacific Northwest National Lab address many of America's most pressing issues in energy, the environment and national security through advances in basic and applied science. Founded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,400 staff and has an yearly budget of nearly $1 billion. It is managed by Battelle for the D.O.E.'s Office of Science. As the single biggest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information on PNNL, visit the PNNL News Center, or follow PNNL on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
