Contest Shows Creative Side of Scientists

Artistic representations of scientific progress often depict a single genius working alone in a laboratory to make exciting discoveries. But reality features collaboration, with numerous researchers coming together and bringing their distinct expertise to tackle complex questions as a team at large-scale user facilities.

The Ion Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials (IDREAM) Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) is using a team science approach to understand how radiation affects the chemistry and behavior of materials found in legacy radioactive waste.

Now, the IDREAM team is sharing its research in a creative way through the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) 2025 Art of Science Image Contest, sponsored biennially by the Office of Science’s Basic Energy Sciences program. 

The contest aims to educate, inspire, and entertain audiences about the extraordinary science, innovation, and people in the DOE’s EFRCs, Energy Innovation Hubs, and Computational Materials and Chemical Sciences programs. 

The public can view IDREAM’s submission and vote for the People’s Choice Award before the DOE contest closes on August 5, 2025. 

IDREAM is led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and also includes researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Hunter College of the City University of New York, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Utah, and the University of Washington as partner institutions. The IDREAM EFRC, created in 2016, has led to several basic science discoveries in support of legacy waste processing challenges. 

“The way we approach science at IDREAM centers on the power of teaming,” said IDREAM Director and chemist Carolyn Pearce at PNNL. “That’s what our image represents—the collaborative effort required to study complicated processes that can occur as fast as tiny fractions of a second or as slow as decades.”

IDREAM brings together an interdisciplinary group that includes radiation chemists, geochemists, physicists, computational chemists, and chemical engineers. In 2024, after eight years of exploring interfaces, IDREAM refocused its efforts on connecting ultrafast atomic processes to chemistry that occurs over the span of hours to years. 

When thinking of representing IDREAM science as art, the scientists wanted to combine images of their equipment, team, and data. The composite features photographs from light source-based experiments, microscope images of irradiated material, and computed molecular structures.

“Our image focuses on what happens after you expose a mixture of molecules and water to ultrafast irradiation,” said Robert Felsted, a postdoctoral researcher at PNNL and the chair of IDREAM’s Early Career Network. “In our experiments, we precisely irradiate a jet of the mixture and then watch what happens next.”

Post irradiation, clusters begin to form and then turn into larger mineral crystals. The scientists can track the changes caused by radiation, providing essential information for treating the legacy radioactive waste stored in underground tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington State. These changes happen in layers, just like the layers of IDREAM researchers, data, and equipment visible in the image.