BYLINE: Beth Burmahl
World-renowned scientists named Argonne Distinguished Fellows for 2025. Roughly 3% of the nationwide lab’s analysis workers obtain the celebrated honor.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory named 5 extremely completed scientists as Argonne Distinguished Fellows in 2025. They are Seth B. Darling, Katrin Heitmann, Ken Kemner, Robert Ross and Temitope Taiwo.
This celebrated honor is awarded to scientists who’ve earned worldwide recognition and demonstrated distinctive accomplishments in science or engineering that instantly assist Argonne’s core missions. Argonne Distinguished Fellows are on the helm of main, complicated and high-priority initiatives that form the laboratory’s future. Fewer than 3% of Argonne’s analysis workers obtain this elite recognition.
“Our Distinguished Fellows represent the very best of Argonne. Their achievements reflect not only extraordinary scientific talent, but also a deep commitment to advancing discovery in service to our nation,” stated Argonne Director Paul Kearns. “At a time when scientific leadership, rapid innovation, and meaningful impact are more important than ever, these Fellows exemplify that spirit. They have shaped fields, strengthened our capabilities, and inspired colleagues across the laboratory. I am proud to recognize contributions that will continue to make a lasting impact on science and society.”
Argonne Distinguished Fellows 2025
Seth B. Darling is a number one supplies scientist combining superior analysis with real-world innovation to resolve international power and water challenges.
Darling, who joined Argonne in 2002, is chief science and know-how officer for the Advanced Energy Technologies directorate. He additionally serves as a senior scientist within the Chemical Sciences and Engineering division and director of the Advanced Materials for Energy-Water Systems Energy Frontier Research Center, the place he leads efforts to discover how water interacts with supplies, enabling new applied sciences to enhance water remedy, power effectivity and useful resource restoration.
Darling’s present analysis facilities on novel supplies for eradicating pollution from water and extracting priceless supplies — like vitamins, metals or clear water — for reuse. Among his improvements, he developed clay-based membranes for exact separations, coatings that resist fouling to increase membrane life, and photothermal supplies that harness daylight to recuperate priceless sources from wastewater. He additionally designed molecular probes that selectively detect or take away particular contaminants, advancing focused sensing and cleanup applied sciences.
He co-invented sequential infiltration synthesis (SIS), an progressive approach derived from atomic layer deposition that diffuses vapor into polymers to create purposeful supplies corresponding to superior membranes, optical movies and sensors. This breakthrough earned an R&D 100 Award in 2014. Using SIS, Darling co-developed the Oleo Sponge — a reusable materials that effectively removes oil from water. His work was acknowledged with a second R&D 100 Award in 2017.
A fellow of the American Vacuum Society, Darling has authored over 150 publications and holds greater than 20 patents. His work seems in journals together with Science, Advanced Materials, Energy & Environmental Science and Materials Today. He can also be the creator of extensively learn books on water and science communication. In addition to his Argonne appointments, he holds a fellowship within the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.
Katrin Heitmann is a physicist and computational scientist whose analysis in precision cosmology makes use of excessive efficiency computing to discover the universe’s large-scale construction and the character of darkish power.
She joined Argonne in 2011 and now serves as deputy director of the High Energy Physics division and leads the Cosmological Physics and Advanced Computing group. Heitmann is a senior affiliate for the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics on the University of Chicago and a member of the Northwestern-Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering.
Among her breakthroughs, Heitmann co-developed the Hardware/Hybrid Accelerated Cosmology Code, a number one platform for high-performance cosmological modeling. She additionally spearheaded the event of CosmoTools for simulation information evaluation.
In 2007, Heitmann and her collaborators launched the Cosmic Calibration Framework, a structured strategy to offering precision predictions primarily based on a small variety of cosmological simulations to enhance general understanding of the universe. The framework has develop into a cornerstone of recent computational cosmology.
As a spokesperson for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time Dark Energy Science Collaboration from 2021 to 2023, Heitmann led a world group of greater than 1,000 scientists to organize for the inflow of knowledge from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to advance darkish power analysis.
Before becoming a member of Argonne, she was a workers scientist at DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.
A fellow of the American Physical Society, Heitmann has authored greater than 100 peer-reviewed publications and is first creator on 15 journal articles.
She acquired the 2017 University of Chicago Award for Distinguished Performance and was a finalist for the Gordon Bell Award, an award to acknowledge excellent achievement in excessive efficiency computing, in 2012, 2013 and 2025.
Ken Kemner is a number one physicist whose contributions are shaping the way forward for synchrotron science and environmental analysis.
He is the founder and chief of Argonne’s Molecular Environmental Science and Biogeochemical Processes group, a multidisciplinary group that mixes synchrotron radiation with laboratory-based environmental chemistry and biology to research biogeochemical processes. Kemner is a senior scientist and group chief in Argonne’s Biosciences division, the place he has served since 1996.
Kemner is globally acknowledged for pioneering high-energy X-ray and synchrotron methods to disclose molecular-scale bio-environmental processes.
His analysis has catalyzed three main advances: imaging microorganisms and their biomineralization merchandise to resolve key biogeochemical mechanisms; reworking the understanding of uranium conduct in groundwater programs; and elucidating mineral–metallic–plant–microbe interactions throughout terrestrial, aquatic and subsurface environments.
These improvements are reworking biogeochemistry and advancing understanding of microbial roles in international elemental cycles.
He based the Synchrotron Environmental Science Conference Series, a biannual occasion hosted at North American synchrotron services to advertise the combination of synchrotron-based methods into environmental science.
Kemner has authored greater than 200 publications. Along with many publications in Science and Nature, his analysis recurrently seems in different main journals corresponding to Environmental Science & Technology and PLOS Biology.
Robert Ross is an knowledgeable in excessive efficiency computing whose improvements have reworked information and storage programs for large-scale scientific simulations.
Ross joined Argonne in 2000 as an Enrico Fermi Named Fellowship Scholar and shortly gained recognition for pioneering system software program improvements that assist leadership-class computing. As senior pc scientist and deputy division director in Argonne’s Mathematics and Computer Science division, he has pushed foundational advances in distributed storage, parallel enter/output and programs software program. This infrastructure is crucial for data-intensive science and large-scale simulations on DOE supercomputers.
He now directs the DOE RAPIDS Institute for AI, Computer Science, and Data, a part of the DOE Scientific Discovery by means of Advanced Computing program. RAPIDS is spearheading nationwide efforts to develop cutting-edge software program instruments that speed up scientific discovery throughout DOE platforms.
Among his honors, Ross acquired the DOE’s Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2004. His management has guided Argonne groups to earn R&D 100 Awards in 2005, 2018 and 2021. In 2021, he was awarded the celebrated E. O. Lawrence Award for advances in excessive efficiency computing that serve the DOE mission.
Temitope Taiwo is a famend nuclear reactor engineer whose contributions in reactor physics, gas cycles and nuclear power programs have formed the sector since becoming a member of Argonne in 1990.
Among his contributions, Taiwo developed computational instruments and strategies and carried out evaluation of nuclear power programs.
One of Taiwo’s achievements — the event of the DIF3D-Ok spatial kinetics code — was the primary to allow practical 3D time-dependent reactor simulations. He contributed to creating methods to mannequin how neutrons and core state variables work together, which have been utilized in main DOE initiatives just like the New Production Reactor evaluation. Before becoming a member of Argonne, Taiwo developed reactor fashions and reload cycles at Northeast Utilities. Between 1995 and 1996, Taiwo assessed worldwide nuclear safety and nonproliferation points for the U.S. authorities.
Taiwo’s management roles embrace technical positions at Argonne and serving as nationwide technical director for DOE’s Systems Analysis and Integration Campaign and as co-director of the Fuel Cycle Options Campaign. He led nationwide efforts to guage and combine nuclear power programs, guiding sustainable gas cycle methods and coordinating analysis throughout U.S. laboratories. He is now Division Director of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Argonne.
Taiwo served for a few years because the U.S. consultant to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency’s Working Party on Scientific Issues of Reactor Systems.
He has co-authored greater than 400 publications — together with technical stories for DOE initiatives, peer-reviewed journal articles, convention papers and ebook chapters.
Taiwo is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society and serves on its board of administrators and committees.
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