M. Parans Paranthaman, distinguished corporate fellow in the Chemical Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is the 2026 R&D 100 Researcher of the Year.
Paranthaman joined ORNL in 1993 and has worked across materials chemistry, energy storage, high-temperature superconductors, permanent magnets, critical-material recovery and advanced manufacturing. He also holds a joint appointment as a professor and graduate adviser at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education.
His early work on high-temperature superconductors produced materials and manufacturing methods licensed for commercial wire production. American Superconductor became the sixth U.S. company to license ORNL’s RABiTS technology in 2000. Later ORNL technologies he co-invented were licensed to Samsung Electronics and Carlex Glass America for superhydrophobic glass coatings, and to Marc-Antoni Racing for fast-charging lithium-ion battery components. His innovations have been licensed to more than a dozen companies.
M. Parans Paranthaman
More recently, Paranthaman led research on recovering lithium from brines, mining waste and recycled battery materials. In 2024, seven ORNL lithium-recovery technologies were licensed to Element3, a Texas company working to extract lithium from wastewater produced by oil and gas operations. That year, Paranthaman and collaborators received an R&D 100 Award for high-capacity sorbents for direct lithium extraction.
Paranthaman’s 2026 nomination materials list more than 500 peer-reviewed publications, 65 issued U.S. patents and more than 110 inventions. His Google Scholar profile had more than 28,200 citations and an h-index of 83 when reviewed in July/August 2026.
He has received nine R&D 100 Awards between 1999 and 2024 for work involving lithium-ion battery electrodes, additive manufacturing of permanent magnets, high-performance superconductor wires, gallium nitride power electronics, superhydrophobic coatings and direct lithium extraction. His other honors include the UT-Battelle Inventor of the Year Award, ORNL’s Director’s Award for Science and Technology and ORNL Top Scientist of the Year. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, American Physical Society, Materials Research Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Ceramic Society, ASM International and Institute of Physics.
Mentorship has also been a sustained part of Paranthaman’s work. His résumé lists more than 180 people whom he has mentored or co-advised, including doctoral and master’s students, postdoctoral researchers, undergraduates, college teachers and high school teachers. He received an Outstanding U.S. Department of Energy Mentor Award covering 2006 through 2008 and has participated in ORNL early-career and internship programs.
Paranthaman earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from Madurai Kamaraj University and a doctorate in materials science and solid-state chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Before joining ORNL, he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Colorado Boulder. He has served as an editor of the Journal of Alloys and Compounds and as associate editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.
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