2023 New's Items

Kavli ENSI / Winton Joint Workshop

July 10, 2023

The joint workshop between the Winton Program for the Physics of Sustainability at the University of Cambridge and Kavli ENSI, took place from July 10-14, 2023. The purpose of this conference is to foster interaction between the themes of Winton Program and Kavli ENSI by bringing a team of researchers from Berkeley to the University of Cambridge for a one-week immersive experience, consisting of...

Art Inspiring a Quantum-Ready Vision at the Advanced Quantum Testbed

July 7, 2023

The latest experimental advances in quantum information science (QIS) and technology have opened new opportunities for fundamental scientific discovery and novel technology development.

https://aqt.lbl.gov/2023/07/07/art-advanced-quantum-testbed/?utm_source=LBNL&utm…

ChatGPT accelerates chemistry discovery for climate response, study shows

August 7, 2023
Rachel Leven

UC Berkeley experts taught ChatGPT how to quickly create datasets on difficult-to-aggregate research about certain materials that can be used to fight climate change, according to a new paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

https://data.berkeley.edu/news/chatgpt-accelerates-chemistry-discovery-climate-r…

Researchers Capture Elusive Missing Step in Photosynthesis

June 14, 2023
Aliyah Kovner | Berkeley Lab

After decades of effort, scientists have revealed atomic-scale details of the chemical process that generates the air we breathe – the water splitting step of photosynthesis. The latest work adds to Berkeley Lab’s long legacy in advancing our understanding of photosynthesis and will help the development of fully renewable alternative energy sources.

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2023/06/14/photosynthesis-key-to-life-on-earth-starts…

ChatGPT Chemistry Assistant for Text Mining and the Prediction of MOF Synthesis

Zheng Z
Zhang O
Borgs C
Chayes JT
Yaghi OM
2023

We use prompt engineering to guide ChatGPT in the automation of text mining of metal–organic framework (MOF) synthesis conditions from diverse formats and styles of the scientific literature. This effectively mitigates ChatGPT’s tendency to hallucinate information, an issue that previously made the use of large language models (LLMs) in scientific fields challenging. Our approach involves the development of a workflow implementing three different processes for text mining, programmed by ChatGPT itself. All of them enable parsing, searching, filtering, classification, summarization,...

Hand-held water harvester powered by sunlight could combat water scarcity

July 6, 2023

Omar Yaghi, the inventor of MOFs, led the study on MOF-powered water harvesters that was published July 6 in Nature Water

https://data.berkeley.edu/news/hand-held-water-harvester-powered-sunlight-could-…

Irfan Siddiqi New UC Berkeley Physics Chair

June 19, 2023

A professor of physics at UC Berkeley since 2006, Irfan Siddiqi will be the Giancoli Chair of the Department beginning July 1. Siddiqi is a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab's Applied Mathematics and Computational Research Division, directing the Advanced Quantum Testbed, a state-of-the-art research laboratory that advances quantum computing based on superconducting circuits.

https://physics.berkeley.edu/news/irfan-siddiqi-announced-next-chair-berkeley-ph…

Scientists Create a Longer-Lasting Exciton that May Open New Possibilities in Quantum Information Science

April 25, 2023
Alison Hatt | Berkeley Lab

In a new study, scientists have observed long-lived excitons in a topological material, opening intriguing new research directions for optoelectronics and quantum computing.

Excitons are charge-neutral quasiparticles created when light is absorbed by a semiconductor. Consisting of an excited electron coupled to a lower-energy electron vacancy or hole, an exciton is typically short-lived, surviving only until the electron and hole recombine, which limits its usefulness in applications.

“If we want to make progress in quantum computing and...

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2023/04/25/scientists-create-a-longer-lasting-exciton…

Alessandra Lanzara was a 2023 Bakar Prize Recipient

March 21, 2023
Bakar Fellow Program

Alessandra Lanzara and her group have invented an instrument that enables scientists to directly map and control in the momentum space the spin quantum number of electrons. This device will facilitate the creation of materials to realize quantum computing, the next revolution in information technology.

Alessandra Lanzara is the Charles Kittel Professor of Physics and a Senior Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is also the Chair of the Far West section of the American Physical Society. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. from the Universita’ di Roma La...

https://bakarfellows.berkeley.edu/profile/alessandra-lanzara/

How a Record-Breaking Copper Catalyst Converts CO2 Into Liquid Fuels

February 16, 2023
Theresa Duque | Berkeley Lab

Since the 1970s, scientists have known that copper has a special ability to transform carbon dioxide into valuable chemicals and fuels. But for many years, scientists have struggled to understand how this common metal works as an electrocatalyst, a mechanism that uses energy from electrons to chemically transform molecules into different products.

Now, a research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has gained new insight by capturing real-time movies of copper nanoparticles (copper particles engineered at the scale of a billionth of a meter) as they...

https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2023/02/16/copper-catalyst-converts-co2-into-liquid-f…