DOE Office of Science Selects 49 for Early Career Funding

The Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science has selected 49 scientists from across the nation to receive significant funding for research as part of DOE's Early Career Research Program.

DOE said the program, now in its seventh year, is designed to bolster the nation's scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during their crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work.

Under the program, university-based researchers will receive at least $150,000 per year to cover summer salary and research expenses. For researchers based at DOE national laboratories, where DOE typically covers full salary and expenses of laboratory employees, grants will be at least $500,000 per year to cover year-round salary plus research expenses. The research grants are planned for five years.

A number of optics and photonics researchers were selected, including:

Thomas K. Allison, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, N.Y., “Ultrafast Dynamics of Molecules on Surfaces Studied with Time-Resolved XUV Photoelectron Spectroscopy,” selected by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences;

Jessica M. Anna, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., “Tracking Photochemical and Photophysical Processes for Solar Energy Conversion via Multidimensional Electronic and Vibrational Spectroscopic Methods,” selected by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

Abraham K. Badu-Tawiah, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, “Visible Light Photo-Catalysis in Charged Micro-Droplets,” selected by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

Jim Ciston, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif., “MAPSTER Microscopy: Multimodal Acquisition of Properties and Structure with Transmission Electron Reciprocal-space Microscopy,”selected by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

Travis S. Humble, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tenn., “Accelerating Applications of High-Performance Computing with Quantum Processing Units,” selected by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research.

To be eligible for the DOE award, a researcher must be an untenured, tenure-track assistant or associate professor at a U.S. academic institution or a full-time employee at a DOE national laboratory, who received a Ph.D. within the past 10 years. Research topics are required to fall within one of the Department's Office of Science's six major program offices: Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy Sciences, Biological and Environmental Research, Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics.

For more information, visit http://science.energy.gov/early-career.