For her work in developing microwave ammonia synthesis and enhancing America’s energy security and prosperity in the process, NETL’s Christina Wildfire won a 2025 Outstanding Researcher Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC).

Wildfire is an expert in microwave technology and helped to establish this capability within NETL. This area of research is considered a next frontier of science and holds the promise of disruptive innovation. She leads the Center for Microwave Chemistry, which is an NETL key lab initiative.

Her work effectively intersected physics and engineering by using microwave reactors to synthesize ammonia, a valuable commercial resource used in agriculture and chemical industries, at smaller scales than other prevailing production methods. With Wildfire’s contribution, a partnership between West Virginia University, NETL, and Malachite Technologies led to the development of a process using microwaves to lower the processing temperature and pressure for ammonia synthesis. The group has worked through significant challenges including scale-up for the microwave reactors. The process has been demonstrated at 1kg/day at 300°C and 300psi and will enable distributed ammonia production for local farm communities and energy storage for wind turbines.

She has initiated the execution of 17 technology transfer partnership agreements, was the driving force behind development of new technology that led to two startups being formed and is currently leading development of a “Think Piece” around technology transfer as part of her Oppenheimer Science & Energy Leadership Program Fellow appointment. 

The FLC Awards Program annually recognizes federal laboratories and their industry partners for outstanding technology transfer achievements. The FLC’s 30-plus years of advancing tech transfer to meet the needs of our nation’s economy would not have been possible without the creativity and dedication of the federal scientists and inventors we recognize through the awards program or without the innovative professionals who work alongside them to achieve their goal of creating available technologies to countless people around the world.

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that drives innovation to deliver solutions for a secure energy future. Through its expertise and research facilities, NETL is advancing technologies to unleash America’s affordable, reliable and secure domestic energy and natural resources.