This Manufacturing Month: All Treats 🍭, No Tricks 👻

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October 17, 2024

Reach out to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO) at ammto@ee.doe.gov with any manufacturing musings.

This Year’s Manufacturing Month is More Than Just a Bunch of Hocus Pocus 🎃

October is a big month for us—in fact, you could even that say we go a bit... batty over it. 🦇 Not only is it Manufacturing Month, but this month marks our office’s second birthday! As the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO) enters its third year of operation, we are leaning into our role as problem solvers innovating advanced manufacturing to deliver technologies and systems for the energy system of tomorrow. Read more about the progress AMMTO has made over the past two years to inspire the next generation of advanced manufacturing innovation.

Save the Date! 📅 Connect with AMMTO Performers and Provide Input for Future Direction 

Join the AMMTO for a Stakeholder Listening Session from December 10-11, 2024 at Crowne Plaza Dulles Airport in VA. This event will feature discussions of AMMTO’s strategy, guided stakeholder feedback sessions, and posters by performers. Come mingle with the community and share your ideas! Registration information coming soon.

Share Your Feedback on the EERE Draft Strategic Framework on Circularity for Secure and Sustainable Products and Materials 

A circular economy can be a more resilient, environmentally sustainable, and energy efficient alternative to our current linear economy, where materials are extracted, manufactured, used, and discarded. To improve supply chain security, reduce landfill waste, and decrease the lifetime energy cost and emissions of products across the economy, we can re-manufacture and reuse end-of-life products instead of leaving them for landfills.

To help us prioritize our R&D investments in this space, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is seeking your input (request for information) on its draft strategic framework on Circularity for Secure and Sustainable Products and Materials. Your feedback will help identify opportunities and challenges to use circularity to decarbonize industry, secure supply chains, benefit communities, and create jobs as we accelerate the transition toward a circular economy.

DOE To Release Funding for High-Performance Computing 

DOE’s High-Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) initiative—sponsored by AMMTO, the Industrial Efficiency and Decarbonization Office (IEDO), and the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management—will issue a new funding opportunity later this fall. Included in this opportunity is HPC4EI’s High-Performance Computing for Manufacturing program, primarily sponsored by AMMTO. Under this program, competitively selected projects apply modeling, simulation, and data analysis to industrial processes and products to lower production costs, improve performance, and shorten the time to market. Detailed topics coming soon!

2024 Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program Fellows LEEP To D.C. for Start of Program 🦅

Earlier this month, DOE’s Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP), managed by AMMTO, welcomed its 2024 cohort to DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C. to kick off the next round of the two-year fellowship. The fellows will leverage resources from DOE and its national laboratories to develop their early-stage clean energy startups and move them closer to the market During the two-day event, the fellows met with the respective DOE offices that fund them and witnessed an informative fireside chat between AMMTO Director Christopher Saldaña and LEEP alumni. The fellows also pitched their innovations during an invigorating lightning round session, and heard from other DOE-funded programs including Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs and American Made Network.    Congratulations to the 2024 LEEP cohort! We look forward to your future accomplishments.

Four AMMTO-Powered Groups Bring the Heat to Manufacturing Technology Show 

The 2024 International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS)— the largest manufacturing trade show in the Western hemisphere—wrapped last month! The Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, supported by AMMTO, debuted a new manufacturing platform technology called “Future Foundries”. This technology—composed of a single platform that integrates multiple capabilities including machining, heat treatment, and more—represents the future of domestic clean energy manufacturing. It’s scalable, flexible, and affordable.    Also at the technology show with their own energizing presentations were three AMMTO institutes, including the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation, the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute, and the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute.

Small but Powerful: Could Nanotechnology Help Address the Climate Crisis? 

Happy belated Nanotechnology Day! Nanotechnology is the manipulation and manufacturing of materials and devices on the scale of atoms or small groups of atoms. In the United States, Nanotechnology Day is celebrated on October 9 as a wink and nod to the nanometer length scale—a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, or 10-9 meters. To celebrate, let’s highlight some recent nano-news!  In a recently published edition of Nature Nanotechnology, a diverse group of experts from across the U.S. government—including AMMTO technology manager Tina Kaarsberg—collaborated to outline how nanotechnology can help accelerate progress toward addressing the climate crisis.   AMMTO’s Conductivity-enhanced materials for Affordable, Breakthrough, Leapfrog Electric and thermal applications (CABLE) posted award winning images of MXenes—a promising (and beautiful) class of new two-dimensional materials from one of its newest awardees at Argonne National Laboratory.   AMMTO’s Microelectronics Energy Efficiency Scaling for 2 Decades (EES2) Initiative posted a video of its Nano Day Pledge Signing Ceremony for its five newest participants at National Nanotechnology Day | National Nanotechnology Initiative.

Apply for Grants To Fund Research on Circular Economy, Smart Manufacturing, and Energy-Efficient Microelectronics 

DOE's Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Program is accepting applications for Implementation Grants. AMMTO encourages eligible institutions to apply; the funding opportunity announcement can be found here. The submission deadline for pre-applications is October 30th. AMMTO is especially interested in funding research in pursuit of the circular economy, smart manufacturing, and energy-efficient microelectronics. 

Making It!

Why Jon-Edward Stokes Looks Up to Einstein (Literally) and Plans To Build a Career That Blends Science and Service

“What do you do when you create the science, but it’s not up to you how it’s used?” asks Jon-Edward Stokes, a recent GEM fellow. “J. Robert Oppenheimer might be known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” but he didn’t decide how or when to drop it.”  A sobering statement indeed.

That’s one reason why Stokes admires scientists like Albert Einstein, who tackled both the mathematical and political equation. Einstein didn’t just come up with the theory of relativity; he also promoted global human rights and visited the first of the United States’ degree-granting historically Black colleges and universities in 1946 to give a speech denouncing racial segregation.  Like Einstein, Stokes often turns to global human rights issues, too. While helping AMMTO researchers develop better ways to manufacture batteries, at the forefront of his mind was how to mitigate possible negative effects—from worker exploitation to toxic leaks—these lithium batteries could have on the planet and the life it supports.

• AMMTO has extended the Energy Efficiency of Semiconductor Applications RFI deadline to December 16, 2024. 
• DOE’s Critical Materials Collaborative (CMC) just launched its first-ever quarterly newsletter! Read the inaugural issue and subscribe.
• Get to know the Community Energy Innovation Prize PROGRESS Phase winners who are hard at work advancing plans that will help them achieve their goals of tackling energy justice in their communities. 
• Calling all photographers with an eye for decarbonization! Submit photos to IEDO’s Framing the Future: Industrial Technologies Photo Contest through Nov. 21, 2024.  
• Dive into the Critical Material Innovation Hub’s impressive decade of successes by checking out this 10-year look back! 
• In a new video series, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s manufacturing program manager, Matt Ringer, discusses the future of the industry, robots, good jobs, and clean energy.  
• Submit papers for the REMADE Circular Economy Technology Summit & Conference by Nov. 22!  

   

Job & Fellowship Openings

ORISE Fellowship Opportunities

Are you a scientist or engineer who would love to inspire researchers and industry to make materials more sustainable? AMMTO is seeking a talented and passionate individual to join our team as an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellow in circular economy.  

EXPLORE AMMTO

Learn more about AMMTO and its efforts to advance energy-related materials and manufacturing technologies to increase domestic competitiveness and build a clean, decarbonized economy.

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