Fall 2026 Issue: This year’s R&D 100 Awards

The 2026 R&D 100 Awards issue profiles this year’s winners and three professional honorees. M. Parans Paranthaman, the 2026 Researcher of the Year at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, also worked on PASTREE, a winning process from ORNL and the Florida Industrial and Phosphate Research Institute that recovers rare earths and other materials from phosphate-industry byproducts. Kumar Sanketh, the Leader of the Year, led a Dow team that developed materials to protect solar cells through years of outdoor service. Cody Somers, the Technician of the Year, learned Kennametal’s metal printers and sintering furnaces so thoroughly that, a colleague writes, the printer manufacturer began contacting him for help. Other winners include GM’s RoboVision Caliper, which GM reports is inspecting welds on Cadillac Escalade EV doors at its Factory Zero plant, and the SATURN sensor system from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which monitors metal 3D printing.