Funding Wizard

Program Objective Understanding fine-scale, local and community impacts of climate change across this nation is a critical gap in climate research and analysis today. Further, climate change is known to disproportionately impact people in disadvantaged communities due to increased exposure and vulnerability. BER seeks to establish CRCs at HBCUs, non-R1 MSIs, and emerging research institutions to address critical research questions in support of the needs of stakeholders and communities in the pursuit of equitable climate solutions. The CRCs will facilitate two-way engagement between BER sponsored research and regional communities, enhancing accessibility and translation of DOE research to inform and build climate resilience. Efforts focused at local levels are expected to identify data sets, technical and process information, tailored models, and community contexts that will aid in the new investigations as well as bring critically needed community and local perspectives more centrally within DOE’s climate research planning. CRCs will build upon and enhance the talent and capabilities at local institutions, providing a valuable resource to advance climate research, identify local resilience challenges, and develop equitable solutions. These centers have the potential to catalyze additional research activities in climate and energy, the development of future technology innovations, and new jobs in communities across the country. Background Climate resilience is the ability of a community or region to reach full recovery after being exposed to climate-induced stresses and damages, using strategies that adjust its adaptive capacity at minimal impact to natural, socioeconomic, infrastructure, and financial systems. A key component of climate resilience involves prediction of climate change induced stresses and damages to systems with the use of high-fidelity models. To offset potential stresses and damages in advance of their occurrence, scientists and stakeholders need to choose from a wide range of potential strategies that offer the best possible outcomes. Thus, the resilience challenge will be to inform the process of choosing appropriate equitable solutions that can prepare for climate-induced risks. Making effective, science-informed decisions will rely on the accuracy of predictions, evaluation of equitable strategies, and assessing the pace at which resources will be available to communities. Furthermore, improving climate resilience over mid- to long-term time horizons needs to include investigations and predictions that can inform future technologies and approaches, where local institutions can identify research priorities and participate in economic development. These predictions, for example, may include projecting when, where, and how the increasing pressures caused by sea level rise will affect coastal systems, how elevated heat stress will increasingly influence the security of energy systems, or the frequency and impact of wildfires or hurricanes on ecosystems and communities. Together, these all combine to measure the time-dependent stressors, influences, and adaptive capacities in a changing climate and how to increase resilience against climate-induced risks. CRCs will provide an embedded, community focused foundation to serve as both a resource and mechanism for advancing climate science and promoting climate resilience. The CRCs will develop a research agenda that aligns with the BER mission, priorities, and foundational capabilities, advancing new fine-scale research while engaging communities and stakeholders in ways that will improve the research and increase its accessibility and utility for subsequent use in community decision-making and action. Such engagements will also provide use-inspired feedback that can help inform future BER research opportunities and directions. The centers will conduct place-based climate change analyses to evaluate the potential societal and/or environmental impacts of current and future climate risks and the implications of potential future responses. In addition, each center will emphasize a set of local challenges to be addressed through a multidisciplinary effort that leverages DOE resources in modeling, data, observations, and/or analysis. Examples of science challenges that the CRCs may address include: · Developing contextualized, community-based definitions and models of resilience, illuminating the dynamic processes, quantifiable dimensions, and metrics that can be incorporated to measure progress. · Developing new and insightful prediction tools and exploring their use through stress testing to evaluate adaptation strategies that can achieve desired levels of equitable resilience over time horizons of interest. · Building or extending observational capabilities to provide the necessary data for new predictions or improve prediction accuracy in support of resilience strategies. Importantly, the centers will emphasize science translation, linking climate resilience science with the local climate resilience needs to accelerate the deployment of equitable solutions through participatory engagement. To ensure that CRCs can take advantage of the most up-to-date scientific information to achieve their goals, each center will be required to leverage the scientific products and/or capabilities at the DOE national laboratories, potentially through direct collaborations with BER-supported research at the laboratories, leveraging of research products, or utilizing available instrumentation and resources at the national laboratories and user facilities. To achieve these goals, CRCs may develop investments in research infrastructure needed to advance institutional research capacity. For example, a high-performance computing capability in support of modeling efforts, or new or expanded observation or analytical capabilities for collection of environmental information. Other important aspects of the centers are to foster next-generation, multidisciplinary climate scientists and to advance awareness and proficiencies in stakeholder engagement. Education, training, outreach, and public engagement will accelerate the innovations, translations, and subsequent applications of BER-sponsored science, as well as empower the science and stakeholder communities to identify future research and resilience challenges.

The DOE SC program in Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program announces its interest in receiving applications from single investigators and multi-disciplinary teams to support experimental and theoretical research to advance chemical and materials sciences relevant to the following:Critical minerals – the natural resource for obtaining critical elements;Critical elements – atomic elements that are subject to supply risks and are incorporated in critical materials; andCritical materials – substances that provide essential functionality in key technologies and have no easy substitutes.Critical elements play a central role in both critical minerals and critical materials. These elements influence the mineral properties as well as the mechanisms of incorporation and extraction of the critical elements. They also dictate the properties that control the function of critical materials, including both molecules and materials, used in a broad range of technologically important and energy relevant applications. These properties include superconductivity, magnetism, quantum phenomena, light generation, magnetocaloric behavior, and catalytic activity. This FOA is focused on gaining an understanding of the fundamental properties and mechanisms of critical minerals, elements, and materials to improve separation and extraction processes and to enable discovery and design of alternates to critical materials that reduce or eliminate the need for critical elements. Thus, this fundamental knowledge will support the DOE strategy to diversify supply, develop substitutes, and improve reuse and recycling of critical minerals and materials. While multiple elements have been identified as critical based on their availability and technological importance, this funding opportunity is restricted to basic research related to rare earth and platinum group elements.

The computational workflows associated with modern science are becoming increasingly complex, often processing an astounding amount of data generated by geographically-distributed instruments. The data is analyzed using a variety of local and remote compute resources and integrated with simulations and artificial intelligence (AI)--enhanced models to both direct the ongoing experiments and inform scientific progress. The future continuation of this trend is outlined by the 2022 report on Envisioning Science in 2050 [1].Pursuing innovative research directions in techniques for advanced middleware and operating and runtime systems is critical to address the unprecedented challenges in implementing future workflows. These research directions may involve, but are not limited to, coordinating work on: a) billions of threads of execution on a supercomputer; b) several geographically-separated supercomputers; c) advanced experimental systems which produce hundreds of petabytes of data each day; and/or d), billions of distributed sensors monitoring the climate or other systems of interest. Recognizing that in systems of this size and complexity sporadic failures of individual components are inevitable, scientific workflows and their supporting middleware and system software must be designed with resilience in mind.

The DOE SC program in High Energy Physics (HEP) hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for the DOE Traineeship in Accelerator Science and Engineering, which provides support to address critical, targeted workforce development in fields of interest to the DOE mission. Up to two cooperative agreements may be awarded to provide funding to universities or consortia of universities to support tuition, stipend, and travel costs for students enrolled in specific accelerator science and engineering degree programs, and to provide modest support for curriculum development and program administration support. Award terms are expected to be up to five years, with the possibility of renewal for a second term. This program does not support generalized lines of Research and Development (R&D) separated from educational and developmental efforts: The purpose of awards resulting from this FOA must be for education and training, which may be conducted through research. Support for accelerator R&D is provided through the HEP General Accelerator R&D and the Accelerator R&D and Production (ARDAP) Accelerator Stewardship programs, through accelerator R&D programs elsewhere in DOE, and by other federal agencies.

The DOE SC program in High Energy Physics (HEP) hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for the DOE Traineeship in Computational HEP, which will provide support to train the next generation of scientists and researchers in this field. Up to two cooperative agreements may be awarded to provide funding to universities or teams of universities to support tuition, stipend, and travel costs for students enrolled in specific academic programs aimed at training graduate students in software and computing for particle physics and related fields, and to provide modest support for curriculum development and program administration. Award terms are expected to be up to five years, with the possibility of renewal for a second term. This program does not support dedicated research efforts to develop new software or computing technologies related to HEP-supported research; such efforts are supported through the Computational HEP subprogram.

DOE SC hereby invites applications for support under the ECRP in the following program areas: Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR); Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Biological and Environmental Research (BER); Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); High Energy Physics (HEP); Nuclear Physics (NP); Isotope Research and Development (R&D) and Production (DOE IP); and Accelerator R&D and Production (ARDAP). The purpose of this program is to support the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and to stimulate research careers in the areas supported by SC. SC’s mission is to deliver the scientific discoveries and major scientific tools to transform our understanding of nature and advance the energy, economic, and national security of the United States. SC is the Nation’s largest Federal sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences and the lead Federal agency supporting fundamental scientific research for our Nation’s energy future. SC accomplishes its mission and advances national goals by supporting: · The frontiers of science—exploring nature’s mysteries from the study of fundamental subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules that are the building blocks of the materials of our universe and everything in it to the DNA, proteins, and cells that are the building blocks of life. Each of the programs in SC supports research probing the most fundamental disciplinary questions. · The 21st Century tools of science—providing the nation’s researchers with 28 state-of- the-art national scientific user facilities - the most advanced tools of modern science - propelling the U.S. to the forefront of science, technology development, and deployment through innovation. · Science for energy and the environment―paving the knowledge foundation to spur discoveries and innovations for advancing the Department’s mission in energy and environment. SC supports a wide range of funding modalities from single principal investigators to large team-based activities to engage in fundamental research on energy production, conversion, storage, transmission, and use, and on our understanding of the earth systems.

The DOE SC program in Basic Energy Sciences (BES) announces a re-competition of the Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) program and encourages both new and renewal applications. Applications from multi-disciplinary teams will be required to propose both discovery science and use-inspired basic research that addresses priority research directions and opportunities identified by a series of BES workshop and roundtable reports. DOE encourages applications that propose fundamental chemical sciences, materials sciences, geosciences, and biosciences research that will enable future clean energy technologies and advanced manufacturing. Coordination across programs is a high priority for DOE. EFRCs under this FOA will include awards for fundamental science that underpins the Energy Earthshots Initiative.

The DOE SC program in Basic Energy Sciences (BES) hereby announces its interest in receiving new applications for Energy Innovation Hub projects pursuing multi-investigator, cross-disciplinary fundamental research to address emerging new directions as well as long-standing challenges for the next generation of rechargeable batteries and related electrochemical energy storage technologies. Electrochemical energy storage is typically viewed as the bidirectional interconversion of electricity and chemical potential energy using electrochemistry for the purpose of storing electrical energy for later use, with lithium (Li)-ion and lead acid batteries being representative of the current generation of electrochemical energy storage. Discovery and scientific exploration of new battery chemistries, materials, and architectures for energy storage are encouraged. Research on electrolyzer/fuel cell combinations using hydrogen or hydrocarbons as the chemical storage media are supported elsewhere within DOE programs and are specifically excluded from this FOA. Regardless of materials and electrochemical processes involved, the focus must be on fundamental scientific concepts and understanding for the next generation of batteries and electrochemical energy storage.The proposed fundamental electrochemical energy storage research should impact a broad range of topics, including decarbonization of transportation and incorporation of clean energy into the electricity grid, especially for long duration energy storage (LDES). Two recent DOE-wide activities involving batteries and related electrochemical energy storage are the Energy Storage Grand Challenge and the Long Duration Storage Energy EarthshotTM. Electrochemical energy storage technology has the potential to accelerate full decarbonization of the electric grid, and the Long Duration Storage Shot establishes a target to reduce the cost of grid-scale energy storage by 90% for systems that deliver 10+ hours of duration within the decade. More broadly the Energy Storage Grand Challenge provides a programmatic framework that supports the vision to develop and domestically manufacture energy storage technologies, including batteries and other electrochemical energy storage, that can meet all U.S. market demands by 2030. Given the foundational role of basic scientific research in providing the needed technology options to support these critical goals, Energy Innovation Hub investments in scientific discovery and exploration to advance the fundamental understanding of electrochemical energy storage processes, materials, and systems are needed. Progress in the fundamental science topics described in the 2017 Basic Research Needs for Next Generation Electrochemical Energy Storage Workshop will drive innovation in batteries and advance development of new and effective energy storage technologies needed for a decarbonized economy by 2050.

The BER ESS program goal is to advance an integrated, robust, and scale-aware predictive understanding of terrestrial systems and their interdependent microbial, biogeochemical, ecological, hydrological, and physical processes. To support this goal, the program uses a systems approach to develop an integrative framework to elucidate the complex processes and controls on the structure, function, feedbacks, and dynamics of terrestrial systems, that span from molecular to global scales and extend from the bedrock through the soil, rhizosphere, and vegetation to the atmosphere. The ESS program scope advances foundational process knowledge with an emphasis on understudied ecosystems. Supported research emphasizes ecological and hydro-biogeochemical linkages among system components and characterization of processes across interfaces (e.g., terrestrial-aquatic, coastal, urban) to address key knowledge gaps and uncertainties across a range of spatial and temporal scales. Incorporation of scientific findings into process and system models is an important aspect of the ESS strategy, both to improve predictive understanding as well as to enable the identification of new research questions and directions.

The DOE Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DOE EPSCoR) announces its interest in receiving new and renewal applications from applicants within eligible jurisdictions for Implementation Grants. Grants awarded under this program are intended to improve research capability through the support of a group of scientists and engineers, including undergraduate students, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, working on a common scientific theme in one or more EPSCoR jurisdictions. These awards are not appropriate mechanisms to provide support for individual faculty science and technology research projects. While the academic, non-profit and industrial research communities are welcome to lead or to participate in applications, a strong component of student education in research is required for all applicants.DOE EPSCoR follows NSF EPSCoR RII Program eligibility determinations. Thus, entities located within the following jurisdictions will be eligible to apply under this FOA: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virgin Islands, West Virginia, and Wyoming.