BYLINE: Amber Rose
Newswise — In a year marked by new milestones and bold partnerships, Argonne shaped the future of science and technology for the nation.
In 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory delivered results that support America’s prosperity, security and leadership in science and technology. This year, Argonne and its partners advanced artificial intelligence (AI), quantum science, energy technologies and critical materials. The lab also worked to strengthen supply chains and train a workforce for the future. These achievements show Argonne’s commitment to solving the most pressing national challenges and speeding up discovery to benefit society.
Accelerating discovery with world-class facilities, AI and advanced computing
This year, Argonne reached a major milestone with the launch of the Aurora exascale supercomputer. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright joined partners from Intel and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to cut the ribbon on the new machine. Housed in the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a DOE Office of Science user facility, Aurora’s unprecedented scale is already transforming research and powering breakthroughs in fields from medicine to aerospace.
While Aurora is transforming computing, Argonne is likewise pushing the frontiers of experimental science with the upgraded Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science user facility. In 2025, the APS set a new world record for electron beam emittance, confirming that the upgraded facility is the brightest synchrotron X-ray light source in the world. With beams up to 500 times brighter, it will enable more precise research in fields like energy, materials, electronics and medicine, and the resources at ALCF will speed up APS data analysis and accelerate the pace of discovery.
To extend these capabilities even more, Argonne joined DOE, NVIDIA, Oracle, HPE and World Wide Technology to announce the deployment of five new AI supercomputers. These systems will further expand the nation’s AI infrastructure.
Argonne also announced its part in DOE’s Genesis Mission, a historic effort to transform American science and innovation through the power of AI, strengthening the nation’s technological leadership and global competitiveness and delivering breakthroughs in energy dominance, scientific discovery and national security.
Argonne’s AI-driven automated material lab, Polybot, is making it easier and faster to discover new materials. Housed within the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science user facility, Polybot uses robotics and machine learning to find better and faster ways to make high-performance electronic polymers, showing how automation can speed up progress in science.
Quantum science and partnerships
Argonne continued deepening its leadership in quantum information science, helping position Illinois and the Midwest as a global center for quantum research and industry. Through partnerships with universities, companies and federal agencies, Argonne advanced quantum computing, communication and sensing, developing new materials, building testbeds and supporting workforce development programs along the way.
The renewal of Q-NEXT, a DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Argonne and DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, brought a $125 million investment that will accelerate progress in quantum communication, sensing and scalable quantum networks for information processing. This support strengthens both the region’s growing quantum ecosystem and the nation’s path toward next-generation technologies.
Energy innovation and security
Argonne’s expertise in nuclear science and technology supported the deployment of next-generation reactors and new fuel recycling techniques. Collaborations with industry leaders such as X-energy, Oklo, SHINE Technologies and Westinghouse helped speed up the development of small modular reactors, microreactors and cost-effective recycling of used nuclear fuel.
In partnership with SHINE Technologies, Argonne introduced new processes to recover valuable materials from used nuclear fuel. This makes it possible to reuse these resources for energy production, space exploration and medical applications.
As these developments move from the lab to real-world use, Argonne is addressing the growing energy demands of the digital age. Together with DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory, Argonne convened the AI x Nuclear Energy Executive Summit. This event brought together industry leaders from AI and nuclear energy, academia and government to fuel the conversation about how next-generation nuclear power and AI can work together to power America’s future.
Breakthroughs in energy storage and materials
As demand grows for reliable energy storage and critical materials, Argonne and University of Chicago researchers created a new, low-cost membrane made from modified clay. This membrane efficiently extracts lithium from water, offering a more efficient and cost-effective way to tap domestic lithium. The approach answers the urgent call for a more robust U.S. supply of lithium, which is necessary for batteries, electronics and energy technologies.
To further enhance energy storage, Argonne is using the combined power of its upgraded APS and the Aurora supercomputer. Together, these world-class tools enable real-time, high-resolution studies of battery materials and performance. They help scientists quickly discover and improve next-generation technologies.
Through these efforts, Argonne is driving innovation across the entire energy storage lifecycle. The lab is developing alternatives to critical materials, new battery chemistries and improved recycling and supply chain resilience.
Underscoring its commitment to partnership, Argonne and the University of Texas at Dallas signed a memorandum of understanding to expand joint research in battery science and critical materials. The agreement will help produce new technologies and support workforce development.
Security, health and global impact
Argonne scientists and engineers help prevent misuse and diversion of nuclear, chemical and biological materials, equipment and technology worldwide. Argonne’s subject matter expertise and technical analyses have been critical to understanding the potential security implications of existing and emerging technologies.
Scientists at Duke and Harvard universities, with support from the APS, discovered a promising HIV vaccine candidate. The vaccine produces broadly neutralizing antibodies against over a third of U.S. HIV strains, demonstrating the impact of world-class research infrastructure on health and biotechnology.
Building the workforce of the future
Argonne hosted the first AI STEM Education Summit, surging forward with investment in education and training for tomorrow’s scientists and engineers. Nearly 200 educators and academic leaders explored how AI is changing scientific discovery and STEM learning. The event shared practical strategies for using AI in classrooms and built partnerships to help students succeed in an AI-driven future.
Looking ahead
As Argonne looks to the coming year, the laboratory will build on these achievements. The lab will drive discovery in AI, quantum, energy and materials science, strengthen partnerships and prepare the workforce for tomorrow’s challenges. With world-class facilities and a strong commitment to research excellence, Argonne remains at the forefront of innovation, ready to tackle the nation’s most urgent scientific and technological priorities.
About Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials
The Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit https://science.osti.gov/User-Facilities/User-Facilities-at-a-Glance.
The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility provides supercomputing capabilities to the scientific and engineering community to advance fundamental discovery and understanding in a broad range of disciplines. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, the ALCF is one of two DOE Leadership Computing Facilities in the nation dedicated to open science.
About the Advanced Photon Source
The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.
This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
About Q-NEXT
Q-NEXT is a U.S. Department of Energy National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Argonne National Laboratory. The center brings together world-class researchers from national laboratories, universities and technology companies with the goal of developing the science and technology to control and distribute quantum information. Q-NEXT develops networks of sensors and secure communications systems, creates materials for scalable quantum devices, and trains the next-generation quantum-ready workforce to ensure continued U.S. scientific and economic leadership in the rapidly advancing field of quantum information science. Visit https://q-next.org/.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newswise.com%2Farticles%2Fwhat-were-argonne-s-top-science-research-breakthroughs-in-2025%2F%3Fsc%3Drsla
