Skip to main content

Coury Turczyn

Coury Turczyn writes communications content for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF). He has worked in different communications fields over the years, though much of his career has been devoted to local journalism. In between his journalism stints, Coury worked as a web content editor for CNET.com, the G4 cable TV network, and HGTV.com.

water moleculesFeaturedScience

Getting the Matrix of Life Right

More than a year ago, computational scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory published a study in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation that raised a serious question about a long-standing methodology used by researchers who conduct molecular dynamics simulations involving water. What if using the standard…
Coury Turczyn
July 9, 2025
air-water interfaceFeaturedScience

Speeding Up Chemical Reactions

Using the now-decommissioned Summit supercomputer, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran the largest and most accurate molecular dynamics simulations yet of the interface between water and air during a chemical reaction. The simulations have uncovered how water controls such chemical reactions by dynamically coupling with…
Coury Turczyn
June 17, 2025
neutron star simulation ORNLFeaturedScience

Journey to the Center of a Neutron Star

For astrophysicists, neutron stars stand out as objects of irresistible fascination — perhaps, in part, because of how difficult they are to decipher. But calculations conducted on the Frontier supercomputer, located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have revealed new clues about the inner workings of neutron…
Coury Turczyn
June 2, 2025
OLCF hackathonsFeaturedPeople

The OLCF’s Problem Busters

Professor Spencer Bryngelson and his team of researchers at Georgia Tech’s School of Computational Science and Engineering were excited to bring their code into the new world of exascale-class supercomputing. The Multicomponent Flow Code, or MFC, originated in the early 2000s to model the simultaneous movements of gases and liquids as they…
Coury Turczyn
February 11, 2025
FeaturedScience

Summit’s Bonus Year of Scientific Achievement

Leadership-class supercomputers dedicated to open science are not built to last forever. In fact, they have a limited lifespan by design. No matter how powerful they may be on launch day, advancements in computing technology and changing computing needs will push them closer to obsolescence with each passing year until…
Coury Turczyn
December 3, 2024
DNA researchFeaturedScience

Bigger, Faster, Smarter Genetics Research

A team of researchers used the Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a new methodology for conducting a genome-wide association study, or GWAS, to earn a finalist nomination for the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Gordon Bell Prize for outstanding achievement in high-performance computing,…
Coury Turczyn
November 1, 2024
Exascale new frontier OLCF BannerFeaturedScience

Exascale’s New Frontier: CANDLE

PI: Rick Stevens Associate Laboratory Director, Computing, Environment and Life Sciences, Argonne National Laboratory In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap meant rethinking,…
Coury Turczyn
September 4, 2024
whisper jetFeaturedIndustry

Flying Quieter and Cleaner

From a nondescript industrial building in the small town of Crossville, Tennessee, the team of engineers at Whisper Aero is planning a revolution in aviation technology. Previously home to a publisher of magazines — including, coincidentally, Trade-A-Plane, an airplane sales publication started in 1937 — the long-empty property’s cavernous spaces…
Coury Turczyn
August 12, 2024
ECP Software TechnologyFeaturedTechnology

Exascale’s New Frontier: SuperLU/STRUMPACK

PI: Sherry Li, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory  In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap meant rethinking, reinventing, and optimizing dozens of scientific applications…
Coury Turczyn
July 9, 2024
FeaturedIndustryScience

New Clues to Improving Fusion Confinement

Nuclear fusion — when two nuclei combine to form a new nucleus, thereby releasing energy — may be the clean, reliable, limitless power source of the future. But first, scientists must learn how to control its production. Building on decades of prior research, scientists have developed sophisticated techniques to improve…
Coury Turczyn
June 24, 2024
ECP Software TechnologyTechnology

Exascale’s New Frontier: ADIOS

PI: Scott Klasky, Oak Ridge National Laboratory In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap meant rethinking, reinventing, and optimizing dozens of scientific applications…
Coury Turczyn
May 20, 2024
water moleculesScience

Something in the Water Does Not Compute

Computational scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have published a study in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation that questions a long-accepted factor in simulating the molecular dynamics of water: the 2 femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) time step. The femtosecond is a timescale…
Coury Turczyn
May 6, 2024
SLAC LINACTechnology

ORNL and SLAC Team Up for Breakthrough Biology Projects

Plans to unite the capabilities of two cutting-edge technological facilities funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science promise to usher in a new era of dynamic structural biology. Through DOE’s Integrated Research Infrastructure, or IRI, initiative, the facilities will complement each other’s technologies in the pursuit of science…
Coury Turczyn
May 6, 2024
ADIOS team ORNLTechnology

Adaptable IO System Delivers the Data

Amid the challenges that the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility faced in assembling and launching the world’s first exascale-class (more than a quintillion calculations per second) supercomputer, Frontier, one key component was hitch-free. Integral to Frontier’s functionality is its ability to store the vast amounts of data…
Coury Turczyn
April 29, 2024
NASA Mars simulationScience

Planning for a Smooth Landing on Mars

A U.S. mission to land astronauts on the surface of Mars will be unlike any other extraterrestrial landing ever undertaken by NASA. Although the space agency has successfully landed nine robotic missions on Mars since its first surface missions in 1976 with the Viking Project, safely bringing humans to Mars…
Coury Turczyn
February 29, 2024
Exascale new frontier OLCF BannerTechnology

Exascale’s New Frontier: LatticeQCD

PI: Andreas Kronfeld, Distinguished Scientist, Fermilab In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap meant rethinking, reinventing, and optimizing dozens of scientific applications and…
Coury Turczyn
February 22, 2024
ECP Software TechnologyTechnology

Exascale’s New Frontier: SLATE

PI: Mark Gates, Research Assistant Professor, Innovative Computing Laboratory at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project, or ECP, set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap…
Coury Turczyn
January 30, 2024
Exascale new frontier OLCF BannerScience

Exascale’s New Frontier: ExaSGD

PI: Christopher S. Oehmen, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap meant rethinking, reinventing, and optimizing dozens of scientific applications…
Coury Turczyn
January 5, 2024