The Office of Science supports high-priority, mission-relevant research initiatives that span multiple program offices. BER is involved in several of these initiatives, which are outlined below.
- BRaVE: Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment
- FAIR: Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research
- RENEW: Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce
- Energy Earthshots
- ACCELERATE: Accelerate Innovations in Emerging Technologies
BRaVE: Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment
Advancing DOE’s distinctive capabilities to support national biopreparedness and response
In March 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (SC) established the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory (NVBL). Harnessing capabilities across all 17 DOE national laboratories, NVBL made critical advances by leveraging decades of DOE investments in basic science and experimental user facilities—including X-ray and neutron sources, leadership computing facilities, nanoscale science research centers, and biological characterization laboratories. This foundational research delivered the expertise and capabilities necessary to meet some of the greatest scientific challenges facing the community during the pandemic.
In FY 2022, Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) was initiated, which leverages the highly successful framework established by the NVBL and broadens its capabilities to provide new capabilities for biopreparedness, taking advantage of its unique capabilities and facilities in physical, computational, and life sciences and its integrative, cross-disciplinary, and collaborative tradition across experiments, models, and analyses.
BRaVE 2023 Awards
The Office of Science supported 10 awards in 2023 that include multi-institutional teams, led by individual national laboratories with partners from other national laboratories and universities, including historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions. BER supported four of these new projects, which focus on innovative multidisciplinary experimental and computational technologies to understand molecular mechanisms underlying host-pathogen interactions to develop new approaches for disease detection and design of targeting interventions. Additional awards by ASCR and BES focus on developing more complete models of how epidemics spread, designing novel anti-pathogen materials, and providing innovations in DOE’s user facilities.
| Lead PI | Project | PI Organization | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starkenburg, Shawn | Decoding Host-Pathogen Dynamics with 4D (Epi)Genomics | Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) | 2023 |
| Cheung, Margaret | Enhancing Biopreparedness Through a Model System to Understand the Molecular Mechanisms That Lead to Pathogenesis and Disease Transmission | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) | 2023 |
| Mutalik, Vivek | Phage Foundry: A High-Throughput Platform for Rapid Design and Development of Countermeasures to Combat Emerging Drug-Resistant Pathogens | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) | 2023 |
| Liu, Qun | Unlocking the Molecular Basis of Plant-Pathogen Interactions to Create Resilient Bioenergy Crops | Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) | 2023 |
- SC BRaVE website: science.osti.gov/Initiatives/Biopreparedness
- 2023 Funding Awards and accompanying LAB 23-295 Call for Proposals
FAIR: Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research
Building research capacity and expertise at institutions historically underrepresented in the Office of Science portfolio
Through the Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research (FAIR) initiative, the Office of Science is supporting mutually beneficial relationships between Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), Emerging Research Institutions (ERIs), and partnering institutions to perform basic research in applied mathematics, biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, geoscience, isotope research, materials science, and physics.
FAIR 2023 Awards
In 2023, $37 million was awarded in funding for 52 projects to 44 institutions to build research capacity, infrastructure, and expertise at institutions historically underrepresented in DOE’s Office of Science portfolio. BER supported three projects, two are within the Biological Systems Science Division (BSSD) and one is within BER’s Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD).
| BER Division | Lead PI | Project | PI Organization | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BSSD | Thompson, Michael | Developing Temperature-Jump X-ray Crystallography to Study Dynamic Biosynthetic Enzymes at Synchrotrons and XFELs | University of California–Merced | 2023 |
| BSSD | Muthan, Bagyalakshmi | Understanding the Role of Duckweed Transcription Factor in Triacylglycerol Metabolism and Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants | West Virginia State University Research and Development Corporation | 2023 |
| EESSD | Dong, Tian | Evaluating Water, Sediment, and Nutrient Transport Rates and Accumulation Patterns in Alluvial Ridge Basins Between the Abandoned River Channels (Resacas) of the Rio Grande Delta | University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley | 2023 |
- SC FAIR website: science.osti.gov/Initiatives/FAIR
- 2023 Funding Awards accompanying FOA 0002931 Call for Proposals
RENEW: Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce
Leveraging DOE research infrastructure to support experimental training and mentorship at institutions historically underrepresented in U.S. sciences
RENEW aims to build foundations for Office of Science (SC) research at institutions historically underrepresented in the SC research portfolio. RENEW leverages SC’s unique national laboratories, user facilities, and other research infrastructures to provide training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty at academic institutions not currently well represented in the U.S. science and technology ecosystem. The hands-on experiences gained through the RENEW initiative will open new career avenues for the participants, forming a nucleus for a future pool of talented young scientists, engineers, and technicians with the critical skills and expertise needed for the full breadth of SC research activities. Principal investigators, key personnel, postdoctoral researchers, and students of RENEW awards will be invited to participate in program research meetings and/or SC-wide professional development events.
RENEW Awards
- BER RENEW Research
- SC RENEW website: science.osti.gov/Initiatives/RENEW
- 2023 Funding Awards and accompanying DE-FOA-0002929 Call for Proposals
- 2022 Funding Awards and accompanying DE-FOA-0002757 Call for Proposals
Energy Earthshots
Supporting fundamental science and innovative technologies to help achieve net-zero carbon by 2050
In 2023, SC launched the SC Energy Earthshots initiative, which includes support for basic research for the first six Energy Earthshots (launched before 2023) through two complementary mechanisms: the Energy Earthshot Research Centers (EERCs) and the Science Foundations for the Energy Earthshots.
- The Energy Earthshot Research Centers (EERCs) bring together multi-investigator, multi-disciplinary teams to address key basic research challenges for the six initial Energy Earthshots, with each Center focused on one of the Energy Earthshots. The scientific knowledge gained should impact research and development efforts currently of interest to the Department’s energy technology offices. The Office of Science supported 11 awards in 2023. BER supported four of these projects. The BER Biological Systems Science Division (BSSD) is funding two EERCs in support of the Carbon Negative Shot. BER Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division leads one EERC and is in support of one more EERC with relevance to the Floating Offshore Wind Shot.
- The Science Foundations for the Energy Earthshots brings together small teams focused on the crosscutting scientific challenges addressing multiple Energy Earthshots. Research will support basic science to seed innovations or to provide the scientific understanding to support existing technology development pathways for the needed portfolio of Energy Earthshot solutions. The Office of Science supported 18 science foundations awards in 2023. BER supported five of these projects projects. The BER Biological Systems Science Division (BSSD) is funding four projects in support of the Carbon Negative and Industrial Heat Shots. BER Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD) is supporting of one project with relevance to the Carbon Negative Shot.
- SC Energy Earthshots website: science.osti.gov/Initiatives/SCEarthshots
- 2023 Funding Awards Announcement
ACCELERATE: Accelerate Innovations in Emerging Technologies
Integrating new approaches into fundamental research to accelerate the discovery-to-product process
Accelerate seeks to integrate novel concepts and approaches into fundamental research that could accelerate the innovation process, greatly reducing the time from discovery to product, which can take years to decades. Accelerating the innovation cycle requires identification of key gaps that need to be overcome at the early stages of basic research so these innovations can enter the marketplace faster. Addressing these gaps will require teams of researchers employing the latest technologies, such as high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, manufacturing, materials, and biotechnology. Incorporation of other approaches to accelerate the innovation cycle will also be important, such as training a diverse, next-generation workforce, catalyzing spin-off companies, supporting entrepreneurs, obtaining input and feedback from industry, and leveraging and building regional expertise and resources, while being consistent with principles of environmental justice.
Accelerate 2023 Awards
The Office of Science supported 11 awards in 2023. BER supported one project.
Real-time Sensing and Adaptive Computing to Elucidate Microenvironment-Induced Cell Heterogeneities and Accelerate Scalable Bioprocesses
PI: Davinia Salvachúa Rodríguez, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Collaborators: PNNL, University of California–Davis, University of California–San Diego, and University of Puerto Rico–Río Piedras
Project Goals
-
- Study and model microbial behavior in bioreactors to address why promising biomanufacturing processes that work well in the laboratory often fail when scaled up for mass production in industrial-size bioreactors.
- Combine multi-omics approaches, synthetic biology, and advanced computational modeling to understand the cell-to-cell heterogeneity that occurs in large-scale bioreactor cultures.
- Focus on industrial microbial hosts as proof of concept to develop a host-agnostic approach to predict the behavior of microbes within their microenvironments.
- Attempt to close this heterogeneity knowledge gap to address the goal of accelerating the transition from new technology discovery to commercialization.
| Lead PI | Project | PI Organization | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salvachua Rodriguez, Davin | Real-time Sensing and Adaptive Computing to Elucidate Microenvironment-Induced Cell Heterogeneities and Accelerate Scalable Bioprocesses | National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) | 2023 |
- SC Accelerate website: energy.gov/science/articles/department-energy-announces-80-million-research-accelerate-innovations-emerging
- 2023 Funding Awards and accompanying Lab 23-3010 Call for Proposals