Transforming the nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to future biological threats by leveraging distinctive DOE capabilities
Initiated in 2022 by the DOE Office of Science, Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) is designed to leverage DOE’s distinctive national laboratory capabilities to support U.S. preparedness and response to future potential biological crises. DOE Biological and Environmental Research Program (BER)–supported BRaVE projects are using computational and experimental approaches to study the molecular basis of host-pathogen interactions. These insights can lead to new methods for disease detection and design of targeted therapies as well as advance understanding of plant pathogens of crops central to DOE bioenergy programs.
The Office of Science supported 10 awards in 2023. These include multi-institutional teams, led by national laboratories with partners from other national laboratories and universities. BER supported four of these new projects. Additional awards by the Advanced Scientific Computing Research and Basic Energy Sciences programs focus on developing more complete models of how epidemics spread, designing novel anti-pathogen materials, and providing innovations in DOE’s user facilities.