Washington, DC—On Wednesday, members of the public, press, and Congress found relief from DC’s heat in the Capitol building’s Congressional Auditorium. Everyone in the room had been invited to spend the afternoon learning about cutting-edge research performed at the Department of Energy’s national laboratories. It was the third annual National Lab Research SLAM.
As attendees found their seats, the emcee, science communicator Jean-luc Doumont, described what they could expect: “Seventeen early-career researchers, each of them representing one of the 17 national labs of the DOE . . . will share with you the highlights of their research in just 3 min.”
Two hours later, one thing was clear. Chemistry had come to Capitol Hill.
Of the 17 presentations, 12 were chemistry related. The expertise was diverse across four categories: energy security, national security, scientific discovery, and advanced materials.
A computational scientist described how she was using artificial intelligence to design experiments to separate critical minerals using vinegar. A spectroscopist explained his work characterizing new materials for hypersonic vehicles that could one day deliver payloads across the world in minutes. And a chemist shared her research into developing new heterogeneous catalysts designed to functionalize hydrocarbons.
But the event wasn’t designed just to highlight cutting-edge science. The speakers had also worked with Doumont for months to hone their message and presentation. They were competing to see whose talk was most informative and accessible.
Presenters reached for all kinds of analogies to make their science understandable, a hallmark of a format that asks researchers to boil years of work down to 3 min that anyone can follow. The scientists compared their work to grocery shopping, scuba diving, and even Grand Theft Auto V, a popular video game. It was clear everyone had labored to perfect their talk, but only five could win, one from each category plus a people’s choice winner.
The winning SLAM talks
“My job is to turn our microbial hero into a metal-resistant superhero,” Kalen Rasmussen explained during his winning energy-security talk. At National Laboratory of the Rockies, Rasmussen works with metal-munching bacteria that could be used to mine critical minerals from battery waste. He’s increased their resistance to cobalt, lithium, and nickel by over 70% through iterative exposure experiments, making them even better at metal recovery.
The national-security winner, Marina Mancuso, appealed to the audience’s shared experience at the doctor’s office to help make her science click. After all, who hasn’t stumped a doctor with their symptoms? At Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mancuso is building AI tools able to quickly diagnose novel pathogens based on the elicited immune response.
Yashwanth Balaji of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, winner of the scientific-discovery segment, said that cosmic rays are everywhere, and they scramble the data inside quantum computers. Balaji is building qubits out of nitrides instead of the traditionally used aluminum to make them more resistant to that disruption, so that quantum computers can more easily deliver on their promise for science.
“I’d like to ask everyone to take a deep breath with me,” began Samantha Kruse, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, slowly breathing in and exhaling. “In that single breath, you inhaled microplastics.” Kruse, the winner of the advanced-materials category, is helping researchers determine the danger of such microplastics. She builds 3D maps of the toxic elements inside individual microplastic particles to understand how those contaminants might be released into the body or the environment.
The in-person and virtual audiences voted for Jenny Smith of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for the people’s choice award. During her presentation, Smith likened the amount of data produced in modern experiments to the water in Niagara Falls—enough data to drown a CPU. She builds electronics that decide in real time which data to keep and which to discard. The devices help researchers capture fleeting events, such as chemical reactions, as they unfold.
The researchers shown here were selected as winners in the SLAM competition. Four won in the event’s four categories. A fifth winner was selected by attendees. Credit:
Blaise Douros/Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory
Scientists connect with Congress
After the event, speakers mingled with the audience over drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
“To start from the level where it applies to a general audience and drill all the way down in 3 min is really a big challenge,” Smith told C&EN. “I think we all did a good job.”
The scientists spent the previous day meeting with members of Congress to share their research and learn more about how Congress works.
“I think as lab researchers, we don’t get to understand the big picture,” Balaji said. “So speaking to congressmen, House representatives, the different committees, we could understand what kind of high-level work goes into making policies.”
For Rasmussen, learning how to clearly communicate scientific research and explaining its importance up the chain of command was a valuable part of the event. It enables scientists to “enact change in a more positive way,” he said.
It was a sentiment echoed by Chuck Fleischmann, a representative from Tennessee, and Ben Ray Luján, a senator from New Mexico, when the men spoke at the SLAM event. “Interact, get involved,” Luján said. “It’ll pay dividends when it comes to making investments in our communities and solving the world’s problems.”
2026 American Chemical Society
