The following news release was issued today by the U.S. Department of Energy. Six of the graduate students selected for these competitive research positions will conduct their studies at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.

DOE's Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program Selects 65 Outstanding U.S. Graduate Students

Students will perform research at National Laboratories, including six at Brookhaven National Laboratory

WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science has selected 65 graduate students representing 29 states for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program’s 2021 Solicitation 1 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.

“The DOE Office of Science provides the scientific foundation for solutions to some of our nation’s most complex challenges, and now more than ever we need to invest in a diverse, talented pipeline of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who can help us build a brighter future,” said Dr. Harriet Kung, Deputy Director for Science Programs in the Office of Science. “These outstanding students will help us tackle mission-critical research at our labs as this experience helps them begin a successful and rewarding career.”

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 765 U.S. graduate awardees from 153 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, four are the first SCGSR awardee to come from their institution, and about 11% 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, atmospheric systems research, 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 first of two annual solicitation cycles for 2021. The 2021 Solicitation 2 cycle is open for applications until 5:00pm ET, November 10, 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 65 awardees, their institutions, host DOE laboratory/facility, and priority research areas of projects can be found here.

The Brookhaven Lab awardees, their current graduate research institutions, and research areas are:

Dan Gardner, University of Texas at Dallas, Microelectronics

David Haliczer, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Atmospheric System Research

Steven Arias, University of New Hampshire, Electron and Scanning Probe Microscopy Research and Instrumentation

Eddie Duckworth, Kent State University Kent Campus, Heavy Ion Nuclear Physics

Steven Lawrence Farrell, New York University, Catalysis Science with NMR Spectroscopy, Neutron Scattering, and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy Techniques

Paul Chao, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Crystal Growth

DOE News Media Contact: (202) 586-4940

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://www.energy.gov/science/.

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2021-19176  |  INT/EXT  |  Newsroom