Each year, R & D Magazine’s R&D 100 Awards are presented to the 100 most significant new technologies.
Over the past 40 years, Berkeley Lab has received 121 R&D 100 awards, including one Special Recognition Award (2018), a Professional Team of the Year award (2023), and an R&D Leader of the Year award (2023).
| Technology/Award Title | Award Year | Principal Investigators |
| New Electrode Material for Cleaner Water | 2024 | Wei Tong, Shengcun Ma |
| gpCAM: Software for Autonomous Labs of the Future | 2024 | Marcus Noack, James Sethian, RonnPadolfi |
| Technician of the Year | 2024 | Howdy Goudey |
| Professional Team of the Year: Energy Management Systems Team | 2023 | Amy Pevzner, Ana Comesaña, Arian Aghajanzadeh, Bunmi Adesola, Christopher Payne, Graziella Siciliano, Heidi Fuchs, Natalie Sherman, Nick Karki, Paul Sheaffer, Peter Therkelsen, Prakash Rao, Rory Schmick, Sergio Dias, Vestal Tutterow, Vi Rapp, William Miller |
| R&D Leader of the Year: Ashok Gadgil | 2023 |
Ashok Gadgil
|
| py4DSTEM Open Source Software Package for Electron Microscopy Data Analysis | 2023 |
Colin Ophus, Benjamin Savitzky, Steven Zeltmann, Alexander Rakowski, Stephanie Ribet, and Georgios Varnavides
|
| Medium- and Heavy-Duty Electric Vehicle Infrastructure – Load Operation and Deployment (HEVI-LOAD) | 2023 |
Bin Wang, Wanshi Hong, Cong Zhang, Fan Tong and Douglas Black
|
| Liquid Medium Entropy Alloy Catalyst (LMEAC) for Production of CO2-free Hydrogen and High-Value Carbon Products | 2023 |
Ji Su, Luning Chen, Shuchen Zhang, Zhigang Song, Gabor A Somorjai, Miquel Salmeron, David Prendergast, Chaochao Dun, Jeff Urban, Jinghua Guo, Xinxin Peng, Yu-Chun Chuang, Chung-Kai Chang, Jeng-Lung Chen
|
| The Cryo-FE: A Near-Monochromatic Tuneable Cryogenic Niobium Electron Field Emitter for Ultra-High-Resolution Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy | 2023 |
Alexander Stibor, Cameron Johnson
|
| Spectral Phenotyping with MirroRx | 2022 |
Cynthia McMurray includes Edward Barnard, Ben Brown, Dhruba Ghosh, Lila Lovergne, and Aris Polyzos
|
| Hydra I/O: A System for Highly Resilient Interchip Communications | 2022 |
Daniel Dwyer, Carl Grace, Dario Gnani, Armin Karcher, Peter Madigan, and Brooke Russell
|
| Solar Fuel Generator Including a Catalytic Mesh | 2022 |
Jeff Beeman (Berkeley Lab, retired), Frances Houle (Berkeley Lab), David Larson (Twelve), Gideon Segev (Tel Aviv University), and Ian Sharp (Technical University of Munich), and Karl Walczak (Sandia National Laboratories)
|
| Quick-ReleaseTM Binder for Recyclable Batteries | 2022 |
Gao Liu, Robert Kostecki, and Steve Sloop (OnTo Technology), Chen Fang, Xin He, Zhimeng Liu, and Yangzhi Zhao
|
| Stable and High-Performing Single-Crystal NMC Cathode Materials | 2022 |
Guoying Chen and Yanying Lu
|
| City Buildings, Energy, and Sustainability (CityBES) Web Tool for Climate Change Strategies | 2022 |
Tianzhen Hong, Mary Ann Piette, Max Wei, Wanni Zhang, Yujie Xu, Han Li, Kaiyu Sun, and former Berkeley Lab researchers Yixing Chen and Xuan Luo
|
| The SEED Platform: Decarbonizing Cities through Robust Data Management | 2022 |
Paul Mathew, Robin Mitchell, and Nicholas Long (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
|
| A High-performance Chromium-antimony Absorber Material for Next-generation Lithography Photomasks | 2021 |
Daniel Staaks, Stefano Cabrini, Patrick Naulleau, Farhad Salmassi, Eric Gullikson
|
| Layered-Rocksalt Intergrowth Electrode Materials for Next-Generation Li-ion Batteries | 2021 |
Wei Tong, Ning Li, Wanli Yang, Meiling Sun, Jing Xu
|
| Neutron and Gamma Ray Source Localization and Mapping Platform | 2021 |
Joshua Cates, Ryan Pavlovsky, Victor Negut, Brian Quiter, Tenzing Joshi, Alex Moran
|
| Flow-Through Microelectrode Cell for Precision Electroanalytical Chemistry | 2020 |
Adam Weber, Nemanja Danilovic, Douglas Kushner, and John Petrovick
|
| Matter-Wave Modulating Secure Quantum Communicator (MMQ-Com) | 2020 |
Alexander Stibor, with the University of Tübingen
|
| Solid Lithium Battery Using Hard and Soft Solid Electrolytes | 2020 |
Marca Doeff, Guoying Chen, and Eongyu Yi, with Montana State University
|
| Porous Graphitic Frameworks for Sustainable High-Performance Li-Ion Batteries | 2020 |
Yi Liu and Xinie Li, with Stanford University
|
| Building Efficiency Targeting Tool for Energy Retrofits (BETTER) | 2020 |
Nan Zhou, Carolyn Szum, Han Li, Chao Ding, Xu Liu, and William Huang, with Johnson Controls and ICF
|
| Amanzi–ATS: Modeling Environmental Systems Across Scales | 2020 |
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Berkeley Lab researchers including Sergi Molins, Marcus Day, Carl Steefel, and Zexuan Xu
|
| Institute for the Design of Advanced Energy Systems (IDAES) | 2020 |
National Energy Technology Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, West Virginia University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Notre Dame, and Berkeley Lab researchers: Deb Agarwal, Oluwamayowa (Mayo) Amusat, Keith Beattie, Ludovico Bianchi, Josh Boverhof, Hamdy Elgammal, Dan Gunter, Julianne Mueller, Jangho Park, Makayla Shepherd, Karen Whitenack, and Perren Yang
|
| Neurodata Without Borders: Neurophysiology (NWB:N) | 2019 |
Oliver Rübel, Kristofer Bouchard, Andrew Tritt, Ryan Ly, Max Dougherty, and Benjamin Dichter, with UCSF, Allen Institute for Brain Science, HHMI Janelia, Vidrio Technologies, and NWB:N
|
| Commercial Building Energy Saver (CBES) | 2019 |
Mary Ann Piette, Kaiyu Sun, Cynthia Regnier, Xuan Luo, Sang Hoon Lee, Yixing Chen, Rongpeng Zhang, Sarah C. Taylor-Lange, and Philip Price
|
| Portable Radiation Imaging, Spectroscopy and Mapping (PRISM) | 2019 |
Lucian Mihailescu, Kai Vetter, Paul Barton, Marcos Turqueti, Daniel Hellfeld, Alex Moran, Victor Negut, and Donald Gunter, with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency
|
| Portable Radiation Imaging, Spectroscopy and Mapping (PRISM) | 2018 |
Lucian Mihailescu, Kai Vetter, Paul Barton, Marcos Turqueti, Daniel Hellfeld, Alex Moran, Victor Negut, and Donald Gunter
|
| Commercial Building Energy Saver (CBES) | 2018 |
Tianzhen Hong, Mary Ann Piette, Kaiyu Sun, Cynthia Regnier, Xuan Luo, Sang Hoon Lee, Yixing Chen, Rongpeng Zhang, Sarah C. Taylor-Lange, and Philip Price
|
| NWB:N (Neurodata Without Borders: Neurophysiology) | 2018 |
Oliver Rübel and a large team from Berkeley Lab, Vidrio Technologies, and Allen Institute for Brain Science
|
| eProject Builder – data management portal for energy services companies | 2018 | Peter Larsen, Mike Spears, Elizabeth Stuart, Shankar Earni, Phil Coleman, Yeongshnn Ong, Biju Jacob, Hannah Stratton |
| OP1 – recycling carbon dioxide into cost-competitive chemicals and fuels | 2018 – Special Recognition for Green Tech |
Etosha Cave, Kendra Kuhl (co-nomination with Opus 12)
|
| Distributed Solar Estimation (DiSE) for Estimation of Renewable Energy Generation on the Grid | 2017 |
Emma Stewart, Ciaran Roberts, Emre Can Kara, Michaelangelo Tabone
|
| Benchmarking and Energy Saving Tool for Low-Carbon Cities (BEST Cities) | 2017 | Nan Zhou, Lynn Price, Nina Zheng, Stephanie Ohshita |
| Double Barcoded Shotgun Expression Library Sequencing (Dub-Seq) | 2017 | Vivek Mutalik, Adam Arkin, Adam Deutschbauer, Pavel Novichkov |
| Crunchflow | 2017 | Carl Steefel |
| Risk Assessment and Uncertainty Quantification Software for Geologic Carbon Storage | 2017 | Eleven (11) LBNL developers on a team including LANL, LLNL, NETL, PNNL |
| Geometrically Enhanced Photocathode | 2017 | Jun Feng (co-nomination with National Security Technologies, LLNL, Nanoshift, LLC and General Atomics) |
| Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity (PIM) Membrane for Long-lived Lithium-Sulfur Batteries | 2016 | Brett Helms |
| Sustainable, Affordable Fluoride Removal (SAFR) | 2016 | Ashok Gadgil, Katya Cherukumilli, Yash Mehta, Subiksh Chandrashekar |
| Cool Roof Time Machine | 2016 | Ronnen Levinson, Hugo Destaillats, Mohamed Sleiman, Thomas Kirchstetter, Sharon Chen, Haley Gilbert, Paul Berdahl, and George Ban-Weiss (LBNL) and Hashem Akbari (Concordia University) |
| Compact Dynamic Beamstop | 2016 | Diane Bryant, Simon Morton |
| Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative (CCSI) Toolset | 2016 | Deb Agrawal (co-nomination with NETL, LLNL, LANL, PNNL, Carnegie Mellon University, West Virginia University, Princeton University, Boston University and University of Texas at Austin) |
| OpenMSI | 2015 | Ben Bowen, Oliver Rübel |
| High Capacity Anode for Rechargeable Batteries | 2015 |
Gao Liu and Hui Zhao (LBNL), Chuck Consorte (Zeptor)
|
| Sensor Integrated with Recombinant and Engineered Nanophage (SIREN) | 2015 | Seung-Wuk Lee |
| Vehicle-to-Grid Simulator (V2G Sim) | 2015 |
Samveg Saxena, Jonathan Coignard, Jason MacDonald
|
| Extended Pressure Inductive Coupled Plasma-synthesized Boron Nitride Nanotubes (EPIC BNNTs) | 2015 | Alex Zettl |
| Continuous Active-Source Seismic Monitoring (CASSM) | 2015 | Thomas Daley, Jonathan Ajo-Franklin, Ernest Majer |
| Binary Pseudo-Random Calibration Tool | 2015 | Valeriy Yashchuk, Wayne McKinney (co-entry with Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories and ABeam Technologies, Inc.) |
| BioSig3D | 2014 | Bahram Parvin, Gerald Fontenay, Cemal Bilgin, Hang Chang, Ju Han |
| Tissue Specific Cell Wall Engineering for Biofuels and Biomaterials | 2014 | Henrik Scheller, Dominique Loqué |
| Berkeley Lab Multiplex Chemotyping Microarray | 2014 | Hoi-Ying Holman, Liang Chen, Giovanni Birarda, Sun Choi |
| High Throughput NIMS Screening | 2013 | Trent Northen (co-entry with Nextval Systems) |
| Bacteriophage Power Generator | 2013 | Seung-Wuk Lee |
| Conducting Polymer Binder for High Capacity Lithium Ion Batteries | 2013 |
Gao Liu, Wanli Yang, Lin-Wang Wang, Vincent Battaglia and postdoctoral fellows Sang-Jae Park, Mingyan Wu, Shidi Xun
|
| OSCARS: On-demand Secure Circuits and Reservation System | 2013 | Chin Guok |
| Universal Smart Window Coating | 2013 | Delia Milliron, Guillermo Garcia, Raffaella Buonsanti, Anna Llordés |
| Campanile Probe | 2013 | Alex Weber-Bargioni, P. James Schuck, Stefano Cabrini |
| OWL-MRI: Optically Detected Oil Well Logging by MRI | 2013 | Alex Pines, Vikram Bajaj, Scott Seltzer, Paul Ganssle |
| VOTO: Heat Activated Fuel Cell | 2013 | Steve Visco, Mike Tucker, Lutgard DeJonghe (co-entry with Point Source Power) |
| Multinozzle Emitter Array | 2012 | Daojing Wang, Pan Mao, Peidong Yang |
| Compact Variable Collimator | 2012 | Simon Morton, Jeff Dickert (co-entry with Genomics Institute of Novartis Research Foundation and Takeda Pharmaceutical) |
| Laser Ablation Molecular Isotopic Spectrometry (LAMIS) | 2012 | Rick Russo, Xianglei Mao (co-entry with Applied Spectra) |
| High Output Neutron Generator | 2012 | Qing Ji, Bernhard Ludewigt (co-entry with Adelphi Technology) |
| MRMI: Magnetic Resonance Microarray Imaging | 2011 | Alex Pines, Vikram Bajaj, David Wemmer, Matthew Francis |
| Nanostructured Antifogging Coatings | 2011 | Samuel Mao, Vasileia Zormpa, Xiaobo Chen |
| Home Energy Saver | 2010 | Home Energy Saver team, led by Evan Mills and Rich Brown (co-entry with Microsoft) |
| Rough Silicon Nanowires for Waste Heat Utilization | 2010 | Peidong Yang, Allon Hochbaum, Renkun Chen, Raul Diaz Delgado, Arun Majumdar |
| Chemicals on Demand | 2010 | Alex Zettl, Jean Frechet, David Okawa, Stefan Pastine |
| APPELS: Differentially Pumped Ambient Pressure PhotoElectron Lens System for Photoemission Studies | 2010 | Frank Ogletree, Hendrick Bluhm, Zahid Hussain, Miquel Salmeron (co-entry with Franz Haber Institute of the Mas Planck Society and SPECS GmbH) |
| EMGeo: ElectroMagnetic Geological Mapper | 2009 | Greg Newman, Michael Commer |
| Nanocrystal Solar Cells | 2009 | Paul Alivisatos, Delia Milliron, Ilan Gur, Liberato Manna, Erik Scher, Haitao Liu, Steven Hughes, Neil Fromer, Richard Robinson, Bryce Sadtler (co-entry with Solexant) |
| NEXUS DLC-X Coating System with Pulsed Filtered Cathodic Arc Technology | 2009 | Andre Anders (co-entry with Veeco Instruments Inc.) |
| TEAM Electron Microscope Stage | 2009 | Thomas Duden, Nord Andresen, Rich Weidenbach, Andreas Schmid |
| Nanostructured Polymer Electrolyte For Recharge Lithium Batteries | 2008 |
Nitash Balsara, Ilan Gur (Seeo Inc.)
|
| Biomimetic Search Engine | 2008 | Kasian Franks, Connie Myers, Raf Podowski |
| Berkeley Lab PhyloChip | 2008 | Gary Andersen, Todd DeSantis, Eoin Brodie,Yvette Piceno |
| FastBit Bitmap Index | 2008 | Kesheng “John” Wu, Arie Shoshani, Ekow Otoo, Kurt Stockinger |
| Laser Detected MRI | 2007 | Alex Pines, Dmitry Budker, Shoujun Xu, Valeriy Yashchuk, Marcus Donaldson, Simon Rochester |
| Low Swirl Injector for Fuel Flexible Near Zero Emissions Gas Turbines | 2007 | Robert Cheng, David Littlejohn |
| Berkeley Unexploded Ordnance Discriminator | 2007 | Frank Morrison, Erika Gasperikova, Alessandro Ratti, Alex Becker, Jean-Francois Beche, Larry Doolittle, Jim Greer, Robin Lafever, J. Torquil Smith, Harold Yaver |
| High-Output Coaxial-Target Neutron Generator | 2006 | Ka-Ngo Leung, Jani Reijonen, Frederic Gicquel, Stephen Wilde |
| Laser Ultrasonic Sensor | 2006 |
Paul Ridgway, Richard Russo, and Emmanuel Lafond (Georgia Tech)
|
| High Efficiency Multiband Semiconductor Material for Solar Cells (Editor’s Choice) | 2006 | Wladyslaw Walukiewicz, Kin Man Yu |
| The Carbon Explorer | 2006 | James Bishop |
| Berkeley Lab Optical Sound Restoration System (Editor’s Choice ) | 2005 | Carl Haber, Vitaliy Fadeyev |
| Neural Matrix CCD | 2005 | E.A. Blakely, I.G. Brown, K.A. Bjornstad, J.E. Galvin, O.R. Monteiro, and C.J. Rosen; and Cellular Bioengineering Inc. (H. Wuh, K.s. Chinn, K.T.C. Jim, and G.M. Lui) |
| Ion Mobility Analysis for Rapid Identification of Cardiovascular Disease Indicators | 2005 | W. Henry Benner, Ronald Krauss, Patricia Blanche |
| Synthetic Rotational Nanomotor | 2004 | Alex Zettl |
| Transition Metal Switchable Mirrors | 2004 | Thomas Richardson, Jonathan Slack |
| Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Tool for Chip Manufacturing | 2003 | David Attwoood and other 205 researchers from Berkeley Lab, Livermore Lab, and Sandia Laboratory |
| EnergyPlus Software for Energy Efficient Design of Buildings | 2003 | Fred Winkelmann, Fred Buhl, Ender Erdem, Joe Huang, Kathy Ellington |
| Crystal Robot for Nanovolume Crystallization of Proteins for Drug Discovery | 2002 | Joseph Jaklevic, Derek Yegian, Jian Jin, William F. Kolbe, Earl W. Cornell, Robert A. Nordmayer |
| Remote Acess Grid Explorer (RAGE) for Web Conferencing | 2002 | Deborah Agarwal, Clayton Bagwell, Joshua Boverhof, Eve Edelson, Dan Gunter, Keith Jackson, Marcia Perry, Zach Radding, John Shalf, Martin Stoufer |
| Gas-Filled Panels for Energy Efficient Insulation | 2001 | Dariush Arasteh, Steve Selkowitz, Howdy Goudey, Daniel Turler, Brent Griffith (with CargoTech) |
| Fine XAD Sorbent Coating for Air Quality Monitoring | 2000 | Lara Gundel |
| Combinatorial Synthesis of Novel Materials | 2000 | Xiao-dong Xiang,Peter Schultz |
| Constricted-Plasma Source (CPS) | 1997 | Mike Dickinson, Andre Anders, Mike Rubin |
| White Board, Session Directory, Video Conferencing, and Video Audio Tool Software | 1995 | Van Jacobson |
| Solar 1000 Microwave Sulfur Lamp | 1995 |
Sam Berman, Doug Crawford, George Gabor, Chuck Greene, Tom Orr (with Fusion Lighting Inc.)
|
| Carbohydrate Protein Conjugates (CPCs) | 1993 | Marc Bednardski |
| Long Trace Profiler II (LTP II) | 1993 | Steve Irick |
| DC Broad-Beam High-Current Metal Ion Source | 1992 | Ian Brown,Michael Dickinson, James Galvin, Robert MacGill |
| Raster Scanner Beam Delivery System | 1992 | Tim Renner, Bill Chu, Bernhard Ludewigt |
| Alkaline-Fluoride-Carbonate Electrolyte for Zinc,Nickel Oxide Batteries | 1992 | Thomas Adler, Elton Cairns, Frank McLarnon |
| High-Resolution Scanning Photoelectron Microscope | 1991 | |
| Soft X-Ray Small-Angle Scattering Apparatus | 1990 | James Underwood, Rupert Perera, Dana Berkeland |
| High-Fluence Laboratory XUV Source | 1990 | |
| High-Resolution Mirror Assembly | 1989 | Steve Irick |
| Double-Rotation NMR | 1989 | Alex Pines |
| High-Resolution Erect-Field Spectrometer,Monochromator | 1988 | James Underwood, Al Thompson, Phillip Batson |
| Compact Microwave Ion Source | 1987 | |
| Wobbler Beam Delivery System | 1987 | Bill Chu |
| Dual-Phase Low Carbon Steels ‘FERMAR’ | 1987 | Bill Morris |
| Zero-Field NMR | 1987 | Alex Pines |
| Electron Beam Ion Trap (EBIT) | 1987 | Mike Vella |
| Long-Pulse Plasma Density Probe | 1986 | Kenneth Ehlers |
| X-Ray Gamma Ray Detector | 1985 | |
| Fusion Common Long Pulse Source (Neutral Beam Source) | 1985 | Wulf Kunkel, Klaus Berkner |
| High-Current Ion Source (MEVVA) | 1985 | Ian Brown |
| 6-Channel Silicon X-Ray Detector for Plasma Diagnostics | 1984 | |
| Automated Seismic Processor | 1984 | Tom McEvilly, Ernest Majer |