ORNL receives 2025 SAMPE Organizational Excellence Award

The Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering has named the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the recipient of the 2025 SAMPE Organizational Excellence Award. The national award is presented annually in recognition of extraordinary contributions within the advanced materials and processes community across industrial, academic and governmental sectors.

"ORNL is leading the way in carbon fiber and composites research, and we're helping move these materials from the lab into real-world use. The breakthroughs our teams are making are changing the game for industries like aerospace, automotive, energy, defense and even the nation's infrastructure," said Robert Wagner, associate laboratory director for the Energy Science and Technology Directorate.

ORNL is home to state-of-the-art DOE user facilities, such as the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF), the Carbon Fiber Technology Facility and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, home to the world's first exascale supercomputer, Frontier. These advanced resources enable scientists to push the boundaries of materials science through atomic-level analyses and AI-driven simulations, revolutionizing the field of advanced composite materials.

The MDF, supported by DOE's Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office, is a nationwide consortium of collaborators working with ORNL to innovate, inspire and catalyze the transformation of U.S. manufacturing. Learn more about working with the MDF.

Key ORNL contributions to composites research and industry transformation include:

• Pioneering large-scale additive manufacturing of polymers and composites
• Developing low-cost carbon fiber for lightweighting and energy efficiency
• Conducting innovative research in high-performance thermoset and thermoplastic composites
• Creating extreme-environment composites for aerospace and hypersonic applications

The award was announced during a ceremony Sept. 8 at the Composites and Advanced Materials Expo at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Vlastimil Kunc, section head for composites science and technology at ORNL, accepted the award on behalf of ORNL.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. - Tina Johnson