Stephen Streiffer

The materials scientist describes how science is a contact sport

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy ( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 )

Stephen Streiffer is director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and a materials scientist specializing in nanostructured materials and advanced characterization techniques. Before joining ORNL in 2023, he held leadership roles at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University and Argonne National Laboratory.

How would you describe the current state of American science?

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Science is a full-contact sport on a global scale. International competition is fierce, and the nation’s future success is tied to winning global races in artificial intelligence, quantum [technology], fusion energy, advanced nuclear energy and critical minerals. Through consistent investment over decades, America remains a scientific global leader and is positioned to succeed in those areas because of its expertise, facilities and institutions. As other nations continue to focus their investments on developing critical technologies and re-creating what has made America a scientific powerhouse, we have an opportunity to ensure our leadership for the next century by continuing to tackle the most complex challenges. We must invest and compete.

The problems facing the world right now place extreme urgency on discovery and innovation. We must find ways to dramatically accelerate scientific inquiry and time to solution. We also must remember that science requires time, and we need to maintain patience to allow our scientists to experiment and collaborate, for new facilities to be built and become operational and for public-private partnerships to move breakthroughs from the labs to our everyday lives. In today’s world of instant answers at your fingertips, patience is hard. By strategically planning and maintaining focus on our missions, we can continue American success in advancing innovation in medicine, basic science, energy, national security, and more.

The Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission is an exciting opportunity for the nation to put its expertise and investments behind AI and quantum computing for the acceleration of discovery. AI, in particular, is rapidly changing everything. In scientific research, we can use AI to better understand massive, high-quality datasets and unleash the full potential of our nation’s most advanced scientific tools for new discoveries. The Genesis Mission brings together all 17 of the Department of Energy’s national laboratories—including Oak Ridge National Laboratory—alongside universities and industry to make this vision actionable at unprecedented scale. The potential is immense, and we are likely to look back in 50 years and be amazed how the Genesis Mission has helped us to solve challenges we’ve been working on for, in some cases, decades, like bringing fusion energy to the grid or scaling quantum computing far beyond classical computing systems.