Oak Ridge National Laboratory member receives 2018 Blavatnik award for pioneering research

Kylie Hubbard | Knoxville

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The work of Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Dr. Sergei V. Kalinin has paid off.

Kalinin, director for the ORNL Institute for Functional Imaging of Materials, received one of three 2018 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists on June 27 and will receive $250,000 for further research.

The Blavatnik award is presented by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences to faculty-level researchers 42 years old and younger. Nominated by 146 research institutions across 42 states, 286 nominees were narrowed to a pool of 31 finalists. A scientific jury chose three scientists from the finalists in the categories of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemistry.

Dr. Janelle Ayres of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies was chosen for the Life Sciences category, and Dr. Neal K. Devaraj of the University of California - San Diego was chosen for the Chemistry category.

Kalinin was surprised to learn he had been selected for the Physical Sciences & Engineering category.

“I have been a finalist for this award for the previous three years and I know the caliber of the people who tend to win it. It’s typically a person from one of the top five schools with a rather incredible scientific caliber," Kalinin said. "I feel really honored to be a part of the same community.”

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Kalinin inspired by past physicists

Richard Feynman, a theoretical physicist who died in the late 1980s, pushed forward the challenge of finding a way to build materials and devices atom by atom. Current technology allows for the manipulation of tens of thousands of atoms, but Kalinin and his team are looking to change this technology through their pioneering research.

To change the technology, Kalinin turned to the electron microscope, which uses a beam of electrons to create an image of a sample. Typically, when the sample is placed under the microscope, the goal is to keep the matter the same. However, sometimes things go wrong and a hole will appear in the matter from the electron beam.

Kalinin saw this as a way to advance atom by atom fabrication.

"Rather than making a hole in the material, you can, for example, push an atom from one position to another position. Or, you can create a chemical bond," Kalinin said. "People started to observe this type of phenomenon, and what me and my colleagues at Oak Ridge decided to do is to try to harness this phenomenon to actually enable atomic configuration ... atom by atom."

Harnessing this phenomenon has already started, as Kalinin and his team have been able to move atoms where they wanted them and assemble them into small clusters. The goal now is to connect artificial intelligence with the electron microscopes to get them to almost drive themselves "like the Google car knows how to drive without a human operator."

Kalinin credits Oak Ridge people, equipment for successes

"(We're connecting) the people who do machine learning work in the close proximity with the people who work with the electron microscope," Kalinin said. "It’s not a normal, usual connection. We are pretty much the first people to do this.

"You really need to have this unique combination of people and equipment and kind of inspiring ideas in one place, and I am very proud to be a part of the team that made it possible," Kalinin added.

While connecting people at Oak Ridge, Kalinin also has pursued a learning opportunity to connect science with big data technology. Through his joint affiliation with the Bredesen Center at the University of Tennessee, Kalinin explored the idea that science and big data developed separately from one another but need each other to be more successful in developing big data technologies.

"The main idea is that the way of thinking of people who do data and people who do physics are fundamentally different ... they have different languages, they have different priorities, and more importantly they just think in different ways," Kalinin said.

To connect people who interact with data and people who interact with physics, Kalinin introduced physicists to elementary big data tools and basic computer language.

"Once you forget about physics for a year or so and spend time learning data techniques, you can start to do something very exciting," Kalinin said. "You can start to take the classical data science tools and you can start to add some physical meaning to it."

And although Kalinin doesn't know what he'll use his recently acquired cash prize for, he knows he'll be busy.

"Being selected as the winner is a special experience. I am not sure how to say it better," Kalinin said. "My wife is still complaining that I owe her a honeymoon trip despite being married to her for a year."