Argonne-Northwestern Research Collaborations on Display at Recent Technical Meeting

Newswise — The Northwestern-Argonne Institute for Scientific and Engineering Excellence (NAISE) hosted its annual All-Hands Technical Meeting on Sept. 11, 2025, at the university’s Evanston, Illinois, campus. The event brought together 84 researchers, faculty and students from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University to discuss ongoing projects, share insights and identify new opportunities for collaboration.

“The NAISE All-Hands meeting exemplifies the power of collaboration between a leading academic institution and a national laboratory,” said Amanda Petford-Long, co-director of NAISE, director of the Argonne Materials Science division and director of the Argonne Microelectronics Institute. ​“By bringing together diverse expertise and perspectives, NAISE continues to drive innovation and address some of the most pressing challenges in science and engineering.”

Established in 2013, NAISE serves as a bridge between Northwestern and Argonne, fostering partnerships in transformative research areas such as energy, materials science, quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI). The institute also provides key educational and training opportunities for students and postdoctoral researchers.

“The NAISE All-Hands Meeting is a valuable opportunity to connect researchers across disciplines and institutions to find new ways to address critical challenges and opportunities… and to open doors to train and mentor the next generation of scientists and engineers,” said Neelesh Patankar, co-director of NAISE and professor of mechanical engineering and applied mathematics at Northwestern.

The meeting featured a series of topical keynotes delivered by experts from both institutions:

• Ilke Arslan, deputy associate laboratory director for Physical Sciences and Engineering at Argonne, on the role of autonomous discovery in accelerating scientific discovery.
• Laura Schulz, project lead for innovation at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility, on the current state and future directions of quantum high performance computing.
• Amanda Petford-Long, co-director of NAISE, director of the Argonne Materials Science division and director of the Argonne Microelectronics Institute, on current microelectronics research at Argonne.
• Sera Young, professor of anthropology and of global health at Northwestern, on mineral sensing and water filtration technologies, and critical materials.
• Abel Kho, professor of medicine and director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, co-director of the Northwestern Network of Collaborative Intelligence, or NNCI.
• V. S. Subramanian, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern, co-director of NNCI and faculty fellow at the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, on Northwestern’s new and inter-disciplinary AI initiatives and applications of AI to biotechnology, health and national security.

The afternoon sessions featured complementary parallel breakout discussions co-led by experts from Northwestern and Argonne on topics such as microelectronics, quantum science, water and critical minerals, artificial intelligence, and autonomous laboratories and robotics.

The meeting concluded with report-outs from the breakout sessions, where participants shared key takeaways and proposed action items for the coming year.

To learn more about NAISE and how to build collaborations with Northwestern, reach out to Begum Gulsoy, NAISE director of research and research associate professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern, e-​gulsoy@​northwestern.​edu.

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