NREL’s New Laboratory Director and Google’s AI Hackathon—Plus, an Energy Tech Pitch Event

It’s been a busy summer at NREL. In this episode, you’ll learn about:  

1. The appointment of NREL’s incoming laboratory director Dr. Jud Virden, who brings 34 years of national lab experience at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and a background in chemical engineering to his new position. 
2. How Google and NREL teamed up to host an AI Hackathon. (Yes, we Googled it: Hackathon is a real word.)  
3. This summer’s EnergyTech University Prize 2025 collegiate pitch event with many innovative university students vying for the prize pool of more than $430,000.  

This episode was hosted by Kerrin Jeromin and Taylor Mankle, written and produced by Allison Montroy, Hannah Halusker, and Kaitlyn Stottler, and edited by Taylor Mankle, Joe DelNero, and Brittany Falch. Graphics are by Brittnee Gayet. Our title music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino of Drift BC. Transforming Energy: The NREL Podcast is created by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Email us at podcast@nrel.gov. Follow NREL on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, and Facebook.

Transcript

[intro music, fades]   

Kerrin: Welcome to The NREL Podcast, brought to you by the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for energy systems research, development, and integration. We’re highlighting the latest in research and innovations happening at the lab. It’s Wednesday, Aug. 20th. I’m Kerrin Jeromin.  

Taylor: And I’m Taylor Mankle. We have some big news to share in today’s episode, Kerrin. 

Kerrin: I know, I know, like Really big...like “build that suspense” kinda big. We’ve also got a fun story about an AI Hackathon, and later in the show we’ll pass the mic to our special correspondent Nataleah Small, who attended a recent event that involved some innovative ideas and prizes.  

Taylor: A busy month, full of excitement, here at NREL!  

[music]  

Kerrin: Alright Taylor, alright, let’s not leave our listeners hanging in suspense any longer. Let’s share the big news. Can I do a drumroll, like Christmas Vacation style? 

Taylor: Bring it on! 

Kerrin: [imitates drumroll] 

Taylor: And the news is, NREL has a new lab director! Dr. Jud Virden will be taking over the role of NREL’s laboratory director on October 1st.  

Kerrin: Our current director, Dr. Martin Keller, accepted a new role as president of the Helmholtz Association in Berlin, Germany, where he is originally from.   

Taylor: You know, it’s a little bittersweet to say goodbye to Dr. Keller. He’s been our lab director since 2015, so he’s the only lab director I’ve ever known here at NREL.  

Kerrin: Yeah, same here. And the lab has grown so much under his leadership. But we are in great hands... Dr. Virden also brings a ton of national lab experience. 

Taylor: No kidding, he’s coming from a 34-year tenure at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington State.  

Kerrin: 34 years in the national lab system, that is incredible! 

Taylor: – and he’s been the associate laboratory director there since 2011.  

Kerrin: Which means he leads 1,700 scientists, engineers, and staff working on all kinds of energy research, from power grid modernization and energy technologies to nuclear and environmental management. 

Taylor: He has a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Washington, and, a little fun fact, I hear he’s also a big soccer fan.  

Kerrin: Soccer, or football, depending on your global context. It is the world’s #1 sport, after all, you’d know that right Taylor? 

Taylor: That’s right, it’s the perfect time for the new NWSL team here in Denver. We look forward to welcoming Dr. Virden to the lab in October, and I’m sure we’ll have lots more to share on the podcast once he arrives here at NREL!  

[MUSIC]  

Taylor: Alright Kerrin, you want to take the lead on this next story? After all, you wrote what we're going to be chatting through here next. 

Kerrin: Yeah, I guess I did, alright thanks I’ll take it. Yeah, so this was a really cool event to talk about: an artificial intelligence, or AI Hackathon that was hosted by NREL and the one and only Google. And you better bet, I googled the word “hackathon” to understand what it was. 

Taylor: I was going to ask, yeah …  

Kerrin: Yeah so, Google’s AI definition says that a “hackathon” is a collaborative event where people with diverse skills, often programmers and designers, they come together to work intensively on a specific project, typically within a short time frame.  

Taylor: And in this case, that project was addressing critical challenges tied to energy limitations for data centers in the U.S.  

Kerrin: Exactly! Now of course, data centers use a lot of energy, so it’s a very timely challenge to tackle.  

Taylor: NREL and Google brought together about 50 leading researchers from 9 national laboratories to explore how Google’s generative AI and language model tools could be solutions for our data center ambitions.  

Kerrin: Now, Google’s AI platform includes several tools that enable researchers to accelerate and expand their work overall.  

Taylor: Now many of us have heard or maybe even use Gemini...when you Google something it now generates that AI overview. This was one of the more popular tools in the hackathon. 

Kerrin: Another tool, called Agentspace, helps with innovation and problem-solving by combining advanced AI with a unique bracket-style framework—like a sports tournament—to rank and sort through ideas.   

Kerrin: And Deep Research is another tool that enables researchers to gather, analyze, and understand internal and external information.  

Taylor: Using these tools, researchers were able to explore specialized problems related to energy, like models to predict power grid behavior.  

Kerrin: Or, using Vertex AI and Google Earth Engine to understand data center load balancing, real time water data, and cybersecurity. 

Taylor: OK, so all really cool stuff, and we had some really exciting outcomes too, right Kerrin?  

Kerrin: Yeah, definitely. Ultimately, what they walked away with was a successful demonstration of the potential of how generative AI can really accelerate research, by automating complex tasks, and generating novel insights. And a bonus here is that Google got insights into how national labs like NREL envision using Google’s AI tools.  

Taylor: It was also a big deal in terms of collaboration—just thinking of the discussions that happened between all these researchers with different backgrounds and expertise, there was so much shared learning and probably some opportunities for some similar future events!  

Kerrin: Yeah, absolutely. And for Google to have a better understanding of what national labs need, and how they can provide better access to models and tools that support our research going forward. I mean, that is huge.  

[music]  

Kerrin: To wrap up this episode, we have a special segment from our community correspondent, Nataleah Small.   

Taylor: I’m really excited to hear this one. Back in June, the Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Commercialization, OTC for short, hosted the Energy Technology University Prize National Pitch Event, known as EnergyTech Up, at the Colorado School of Mines. The goal of the competition was to empower the next generation of energy innovators and entrepreneurs, and to propel the commercialization of high-potential energy technologies.   

Kerrin: 23 teams of university students competed for a cash pool of more than $430,000. Now that’s some serious money! At the end of the day, nearly half the teams walked away with prizes. Now that’s what I call a major success for student innovation.    

Taylor: Let’s hear from Nataleah about how everything went down.   

[interstitial music]   

[background – nat sound of the room]   

Nataleah: The afternoon of June 30, the grand ballroom of the Ben Parker Student Center was filled with a restless buzz of energy. After a major pitch event at the Colorado School of Mines, teams of university students from across the country anxiously waited for the judges to return from deliberation.   

The students had shared business plans on how to bring high-potential energy technologies to market. From wave energy converters for charging underwater vehicle batteries to new solutions for radon mitigation systems, their pitches outlined creative and practical approaches for technologies developed at DOE’s national labs and elsewhere.   

For some of the undergrads, it was their first pitch event. But for many of the Ph.D. candidates, this wasn’t their first rodeo. For all participants, the goal was to successfully present their business plans to a panel of judges and take home a cash prize.    

[fade out nat sound]   

When the judges returned, a hush fell over the ballroom. As Joe Simon, the day’s emcee and NREL group manager for Research Partnerships, began to speak, the students clung to his every word.   

Joe Simon: We are going to announce the bonus prize awards in, I believe, no particular order, and then we will do the third, second and first place overall…Regardless of whether or not you end up as a winner today, I hope you found this experience valuable.   

Nataleah: Joe announced the 11 teams that won $20,000 bonus prizes sponsored by eight DOE program offices. He continued with the third, second, and first place awardees who received $25,000, $35,000, and $50,000, respectively.   

Joe: Third place, I’m excited to announce, Nanoborne, University of Texas at Austin…For second place, I’ll announce that we have AlchemII, the University of Tennessee Knoxville…And in first place, I’ll announce for our $50,000 first place prize, Seal the Deal, Georgia Southern University.   

Nataleah: Once the winners collected their checks, they did little to hide their enthusiasm.   

Mirka Mandich: [scream] It’s so great! I’m so excited!   

Mohamed Fuad Hassan: Up until the last moment it was like so intense.   

Victor Buitimea: Our team worked months and months, constantly working nights, all-nighters and everything and I think it’s finally paid off. So, we get to sleep tonight good.   

Sevki Cesmeci: The big prize was a blessing.   

Saurabh Pethe: I’m happy, and I’m already thinking of designing a new prototype to go and try this out in the lab.   

Mirka: It’s gonna be awesome!   

Nataleah: The EnergyTech Up Pitch Competition is one way OTC helps promote entrepreneurial thinking to turn great ideas into marketable solutions. According to Anthony Pugliese, OTC director and DOE’s chief commercialization officer, the competition was all about giving students a real-world challenge: take an energy technology developed at a national lab, or elsewhere, and figure out how to bring it to market.  

Anthony Pugliese: You tend to see some of the most innovative thoughts coming from students. And so, as we go into our labs and we're interacting with all of our folks within sort of the DOE complex, they're doing some amazing stuff, but they kind of get set in their own sort of thoughts and ideas. And so, when you're getting to interact with some of these younger people who still the world is their oyster, they can are a little bit more innovative, and their ideas are just really exciting to hear.   

Nataleah: Mirka Mandich, member of team AlchemII, received second place overall for her team’s business plan on a technology that splits the methane molecule into hydrogen and graphite. The team also received a bonus prize from the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office. Alechmll’s goal is to make a dent in the hydrogen technology market. Their tech is unqiue because it produces graphite, which fetches a high market price, and helps reduce methane pollution. For Mirka, the best part of the competition was gaining perspective on other innovations.   

Mirka: It's very easy to get sequestered away in the lab, right? But, I mean, that's kind of what tech commercialization is all about, being able to bring it out to the real world and see why it's useful or why it's not, have people just rip it apart, then you can fix it. So that's part of the fun.  

Nataleah: Joshua Romo, member of team Stanford Maestro, received the OTC National Lab IP Licensing bonus prize for his team’s software application designed to deliver agentic optimization for geothermal operations. Put simply, their tool would give geothermal operators a bigger bang for their buck. The application is based on NREL’s innovative Geothermal Operational Optimization with Machine Learning framework known as GOOML. For Joshua, receiving one of the prizes was a major confidence boost.    

Joshua: I’ve never thought that any of my ideas were worth money. That’s selling myself short, for sure. It’s pretty empowering to think, like, maybe I should pay attention to the good ideas that I have and maybe they’ll be of value.   

Nataleah: For Mohammad Hassan, member of team Seal the Deal, participating in this competition was one step toward turning his university education into his life’s work.   

Mohammad: I want to make a career of it. And for me, to create a new network and also to learn how other people are actually getting into the market, it’s important to participate in these pitches. And also, we want to make our lab’s name as well. We want to make our lab famous. So, I think, like, this helped a lot.  

Nataleah: After claiming the top prize of $50,000 for their pitch on a novel seal design for supercritical carbon dioxide turbomachinery, and a bonus prize from the Office of Nuclear Energy, team Seal the Deal is well on their way to having a lasting impact on the energy industry.  Congratulations to all the teams who participated in the EnergyTech UP 2025 National Pitch Event!    

For a complete list of winners, search “EnergyTech University Prize 2025” on energy.gov. There, you can also learn more about the Office of Technology Commercialization and how DOE is catalyzing the commercialization of technologies that build a vibrant economy. And follow the American-Made Program on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on more prize announcements from DOE.    

[interstitial music]   

Kerrin: Thanks for joining us, Nataleah! And thank you to our wonderful listeners as well, for joining us on The NREL Podcast today.  

Taylor: We’ll be back again in two weeks with more news from NREL.  

Kerrin: But if you don’t want to wait, feel free to reach out to us directly. You can email us at podcast@nrel.gov. We’d love to hear from you! 

 [music] 

Taylor: This episode was adapted from NREL news articles from July 2025 written by Amy Estes and our own Kerrin Jeromin. Special thanks to correspondent Nataleah Small. Our theme music is written and performed by Ted Vaca and episode music by Chuck Kurnik, Jim Riley, and Mark Sanseverino of Drift B-C. This podcast is produced by NREL’s Communications Office.