With two young children and a busy research job, Will Strahl did not have a lot of extra time to prepare for the third annual NETL SLAM, a contest in which early-career researchers explain complex projects in clear, easy-to-understand language.

“I didn’t really have a great amount of bandwidth for formal practicing,” Strahl said. “So I took advantage of opportunities while commuting to and from work and running on the treadmill to go over my pitch in my head and refine my presentation.”

It turned out to be a winning strategy.

A panel of judges led by the NETL Laboratory Leadership Team selected Strahl as the 2026 NETL SLAM Champion. A chemical engineer by training, Strahl advances to the National Lab Research SLAM, which will be held Wednesday, April 15, on Capitol Hill, where he will compete against 16 other up-and-coming researchers who won SLAM competitions at their U.S. Department of Energy national labs.

In SLAM, presentations are limited to three minutes and speakers may use only one PowerPoint slide to highlight their topics. Strahl, who also plays the French horn in a community symphonic band and wore his formal concert attire at the competition, presented “PRIMO – The Well Plugging Optimizer.”

PRIMO is a software decision-support tool designed to help optimize the impact and efficiency of end-of-life well plugging campaigns.

Strahl began his presentation with a comparison designed to resonate with a wide audience. 

“Imagine with me for a moment that you are grocery shopping on a tight budget with two conflicting goals: health impact — what’s best for your body — and financial efficiency — what’s best for your wallet,” he said.

“In a perfect world, the healthiest foods would also be the most affordable. But that’s not reality. You have to make trade-offs,” Strahl said.

State agencies in charge of plugging or retiring thousands of wells that have reached the end of their productive lives across the United States face a similar dilemma. “But instead of choosing between kale and cookies, these state agencies are choosing which end-of-life oil and gas wells to plug using taxpayer dollars,” Strahl said.

End-of-life wells are a significant concern because they block the development of new oil and gas wells needed to produce secure, reliable and affordable energy for the nation. Plugging them is also expensive.

“On average, it costs $76,000 to retire just one well. However, identifying groups of wells that are close together and share characteristics can unlock enormous cost savings,” Strahl said.

Due to the excessive cost and the substantial number of wells, agencies are forced to decide between plugging a smaller number of high-priority wells or a greater number of lower-priority wells that are cheaper to retire.

“This is where PRIMO, an open-source, decision-support tool that we developed at NETL, shines. It brings these trade-offs to light and quantifies them. It allows decision-makers to make transparent and defensible selections that are in the best public interest,” Strahl said.

PRIMO uses machine learning and mathematical optimization to rank candidate wells (based on user preferences); identify high-impact, high-efficiency plugging projects; and compare competing projects quantitatively through computed project impact and efficiency scores. “It turns a state agency from a shopper struggling with these trade-offs into a shopper who knows exactly how to get the most health and value for their budget,” Strahl said.

Material research scientist Thi Cam Van Le, who discussed “Natural Gas Pyrolysis: From Waste to Dual Value,” won the NETL Audience Choice award in the field of 11 competitors.

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Laboratory dedicated to innovating and accelerating the nation’s energy solutions in hydrocarbon, geothermal energy and critical minerals production. With research sites in Albany, Oregon; Morgantown, West Virginia; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, NETL operates as one laboratory to create advanced energy technologies that support DOE’s mission and enable affordable, reliable and secure energy to fuel human prosperity.