Newswise — WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science has selected 78 graduate students representing 26 states for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program’s 2020 Solicitation 2 cycle. Through world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources at DOE National Laboratories, SCGSR prepares graduate students to enter jobs of critical importance to the DOE mission and secures our national position at the forefront of discovery and innovation.

“DOE has long been where the nation turns for scientific solutions to complex challenges, and now more than ever we need to invest in a diverse, talented pipeline of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who can continue this legacy of excellence,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.  “I’m thrilled that these outstanding students will help us tackle mission-critical research at our labs, and I can’t wait to see what their futures hold.”

Awardees were selected from a diverse pool of graduate applicants from institutions around the country. Selection was based on merit peer review by external scientific experts. Since 2014, the SCGSR program has provided more than 700 U.S. graduate awardees from 150 universities with supplemental funds to conduct part of their thesis research at a host DOE laboratory in collaboration with a DOE laboratory scientist. In this cohort of awardees, 3 are the first SCGSR awardee to come from their institution, and more than 19% attend minority serving institutions (MSIs).

SCGSR awardees work on research projects of significant importance to the Office of Science (SC) mission and that address societal challenges at national and international scale. Projects in this cohort span the six SC programs and cover topics like fundamental studies for energy sciences, earth systems modeling, environmental system science, advanced accelerator and detector research, nuclear physics, enabling R&D for fusion energy, microelectronics, machine learning, quantum information science, and data science.

Awards were made through the SCGSR program’s second of two annual solicitation cycles for 2020. The 2021 Solicitation 1 cycle is open for applications until 5:00pm ET, May 5, 2021. Graduate students currently pursuing Ph.D. degrees in areas of physics, chemistry, material sciences, biology (non-medical), mathematics, engineering, computer or computational sciences, or specific areas of environmental sciences that are aligned with the mission of the Office of Science are eligible to apply to the SCGSR program. The research projects are expected to advance the graduate awardees’ overall doctoral research and training while providing access to the expertise, resources, and capabilities available at the DOE laboratories.

A list of the 78 awardees, their institutions, host DOE laboratory/facility, and priority research areas of projects can be found at https://science.osti.gov/WDTS/SCGSR/SCGSR-Awards.

 

For more information on SCGSR: https://science.osti.gov/wdts/scgsr