DOE Office of Science Mission Statements

Principal Investigators who are not funded by the Office of Science must explain how their proposals meet the mission of one of the following offices:

• Office of High Energy Physics
• Office of Nuclear Physics
• Office of Basic Energy Sciences
• Office of Biological and Environmental Research
• Office of Fusion Energy Sciences
• Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (computer science and mathematics)

Office of High Energy Physics

The mission of the High Energy Physics (HEP) program is to explore and to discover the laws of nature as they apply to the basic constituents of matter, and the forces between them. The core of the mission centers on investigations of elementary particles and their interactions. This program is the major sponsor of high energy physics research in the US, providing 90% of the Federal support.

Office of Nuclear Physics

The mission of the Nuclear Physics (NP) program is to advance our knowledge of the properties and interactions of atomic nuclei and nuclear matter and the fundamental forces and particles of nature. The NP program provides about 85% of the Federal support for nuclear physics research. With this funding, the program seeks to understand how quarks bind together to form nucleons and nuclei, to create and study the quark-gluon plasma that is thought to have been the primordial state of the early universe, and to understand energy production and element synthesis in stars and stellar explosions.

Office of Basic Energy Sciences

The Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program is a principal sponsor of fundamental research for the Nation in the areas of materials sciences and engineering, chemistry, geosciences, and bioscience as it relates to energy. This research underpins the DOE missions in energy, environment, and national security; advances energy-related basic science on a broad front; and provides unique user facilities for the scientific community and industry.

The Materials Sciences and Engineering subprogram supports basic research in condensed matter physics, metal and ceramic sciences, materials chemistry, and materials engineering. This research seeks to understand the atomistic basis of materials properties and behavior and how to make materials perform better at acceptable cost through new methods of synthesis and processing. Basic research is supported in magnetic materials, semiconductors, superconductors, metals, ceramics, alloys, polymers, metallic glasses, ceramic matrix composites, catalytic materials, surface science, corrosion, neutron and x-ray scattering, chemical and physical properties, welding and joining, non-destructive evaluation, electron beam microcharacterization, nanotechnology and microsystems, fluid dynamics and heat transfer in materials, nonlinear systems, and new instrumentation. Ultimately the research leads to the development of materials that improve the efficiency, economy, environmental acceptability, and safety in energy generation, conversion, transmission, and use. For example, the fuel economy in automobiles is directly proportional to the weight of the automobile, and fundamental research on strength of materials has led to stronger, lighter materials, which directly affects fuel economy. The efficiency of a combustion engine is limited by the temperature and strength of materials, and fundamental research on alloys and ceramics has led to the development of materials that retain their strength at high temperatures. Research in semiconductor physics has led to substantial increases in the efficiency of photovoltaic materials for solar energy conversion. Fundamental research in condensed matter physics and ceramics has underpinned the development of practical high-temperature superconducting wires for more efficient transmission of electric power. This subprogram is a premier sponsor of condensed matter and materials physics in the U.S., is the primary supporter of the BES user facilities, and is responsible for the construction of the Spallation Neutron Source.

The Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Energy Biosciences subprogram supports basic research in atomic, molecular and optical science; chemical physics; photochemistry; radiation chemistry; physical chemistry; inorganic chemistry; organic chemistry; analytical chemistry; separation science; heavy element chemistry, geochemistry, geophysics, and physical biosciences. This research seeks to understand chemical reactivity through studies of the interactions of atoms, molecules, and ions with photons and electrons; the making and breaking of chemical bonds in the gas phase, in solutions, at interfaces, and on surfaces; and energy transfer processes within and between molecules. Ultimately, this research leads to the development of such advances as efficient combustion systems with reduced emissions of pollutants; new solar photoconversion processes; improved catalysts for clean and efficient production of fuels and chemicals; and better separations and analytical methods for applications in energy processes, environmental remediation, and waste management. The geosciences activity supports mineral-fluid interactions; rock, fluid, and fracture physical properties; and new methods and techniques for geosciences imaging from the atomic scale to the kilometer scale. The activity contributes to the solution of problems in multiple DOE mission areas, including reactive fluid flow studies to understand contaminant remediation; seismic imaging for reservoir definition; and coupled hydrologic-thermal-mechanical-reactive transport modeling to predict repository performance. The bioscience activity supports basic research in molecular-level studies on solar energy capture through natural photosynthesis; the mechanisms and regulation of carbon fixation and carbon energy storage; the synthesis, degradation, and molecular interconversions of complex hydrocarbons and carbohydrates; and the study of novel biosystems and their potential for materials synthesis, chemical catalysis, and materials synthesized at the nanoscale. This subprogram provides support for chemistry equal to that of the National Science Foundation. It is the Nation's sole support for heavy-element chemistry, and it is Nation's primary support for homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, photochemistry, radiation chemistry, separations and analysis, and gas-phase chemical dynamics. This subprogram further provides one third of the federal support for individual investigator research in solid earth sciences.

Office of Biological and Environmental Research

The Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program develops the knowledge needed to identify, understand, anticipate, and mitigate the long-term health and environmental consequences of energy production, development, and use. As the founder of the Human Genome Project, BER continues to play a major role in biotechnology research and also invests in basic research on global climate change and environmental remediation.

The Climate Change Research Division includes process research and modeling efforts to (1) improve understanding of factors affecting the Earth's radiant-energy balance; (2) predict accurately any global and regional climate change induced by increasing atmospheric concentrations of aerosols and greenhouse gases; (3) quantify sources and sinks of energy-related greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide; and (4) improve the scientific basis for assessing both the potential consequences of climatic changes, including the potential ecological, social, and economic implications of human-induced climatic changes caused by increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the benefits and costs of alternative response options.

Research is focused on understanding the basic chemical, physical, and biological processes of the Earth's atmosphere, land, and oceans and how these processes may be affected by energy production and use, primarily the emission of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion. A major part of the research is designed to provide the data that will enable an objective assessment of the potential for, and consequences of, global warming. The program is comprehensive with an emphasis on the radiation balance from the surface of the Earth to the top of the atmosphere, including the role of clouds and on improving quantitative models necessary to predict possible climate change at the global and regional levels. The Environmental Processes subprogram is DOE's contribution to the U.S. Global Change Research Program that was codified by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990.

The Environmental Remediation Sciences Division sponsors fundamental scientific research that helps solve intractable environmental problems or otherwise provide breakthrough opportunities for DOE environmental and energy missions, while also contributing to the general advance of relevant areas of science.

The Life and Medical Sciences Division manages a diverse portfolio of research to develop fundamental biological information and to advance technology in support of DOE's missions in biofuels, other biology, medicine, and the environment. Specific research areas include:

• Bioenergy Research Centers (BRC) are a major 2007 initiative. The goal is to advance basic science and technologies which will enable expansion of the Nation's bioenergy capabilities. Facets of this R&D are well described in the Biofuels Workshop reports. There is some overlap with the subtopics below.
• Genomes To Life research - to underpin biotechnology solutions for energy, the environment, carbon sequestration, and biothreat defense. This timely and forward looking program will develop high throughput, genome-scale technologies needed to understand the workings of biological systems from the nature of multiprotein "molecular machines" to the regulatory networks that control them to the complex workings of natural microbial communities. A key aspect is the development of the computational capabilities and systems that will be needed to model complex biological systems.
• Microbial genome research - to characterize and exploit the genomes and diversity of microbes with potential relevance for energy, bioremediation, or global climate.
• Low dose radiation research - to understand and characterize the risks to human health from exposures to low levels of radiation.
• Structural biology research - to develop novel technologies for application of the DOE National User Facilities to research in the life sciences and to improve access of life scientists to these facilities.
• Medical Science Research - to support fundamental research and technology development for medicine, and to advance technological solutions to medical problems requiring combined expertise in the physical sciences, particularly in physics, chemistry, engineering and computational sciences.

Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research

The mission of the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program is to underpin DOE's world leadership in scientific computation by supporting research in applied mathematics, computer science and high-performance networks and providing the high-performance computational and networking resources that are required for world leadership in science.

The Computer Science research program concentrates on five areas:

• Operating Systems and Tools designed to make software scalable - capable of running on increasing numbers of processors. The program develops operating systems that address the reliability and scalability needs of high-end systems - systems hundreds of times larger than in normal use by industrial users.
• Programming Models enable users to write parallel programs that express scientific programs for parallel machines. Three standard parallel processing programming models - Message Passing Interface (MPI), Global Arrays and Unified Parallel C - were developed with Computer Science support.
• Performance Analysis and Evaluation. With today's powerful scientific computers, it is important to understand the relationship between hardware architecture and applications. Computer Science investigates how best to match the two and develops tools to evaluate how well applications run on high-performance machines. Dynamic Instrumentation, a powerful application for analyzing code performance that does not require application source code, is one example supported by the Computer Science program.
• Interoperability, the capacity to easily write a single application different computer languages in various phases of the program. It can affect how a code migrates from one system to another. One Computer Science-sponsored interoperability solution, the Common Component Architecture, is gaining acceptance as a standard for multidisciplinary high-performance computing.
• Visualization and Data Management. High-performance computing is generating huge amounts of data - often trillions or quadrillions of bytes. Visualization research provides innovative ways to view and analyze this mountain of information. Data management research, meanwhile, helps scientists quickly locate desired information. For example, the Computer Science program supported development of FastBit, an indexing program that answers queries of enormous data sets with amazing speed.

Applied Mathematics translates the physical world into algorithms - mathematical procedures - that computers can calculate and solve much faster and attack bigger and more complex problems than humans alone. Without the mathematics behind them, such things as weather forecasting models and digital television would be impossible. Applied Mathematics enables scientists to describe and predict phenomena like motion and gravity in mathematical terms.

The algorithms Applied Mathematics Research develops power high-fidelity simulation and analysis of physical, chemical and biological processes, describing them in discrete terms computers can calculate.

The program supports research on vital areas important to creating and improving algorithms:

• Numerical methods for solving ordinary and partial differential equations, especially numerical methods for computational fluid dynamics. PDEs solve problems involving unknown relationships between several variables, enabling simulations of things like fluid flow, wave propagation and other phenomena.
• Computational meshes for complex geometrical configurations, which seek to translate domains of mathematical values into discrete points to simulate continuous processes like combustion.
• Numerical methods for solving large systems of linear and nonlinear equations.
• Optimization, which seeks to minimize or maximize mathematical functions and can be used to find the most efficient solutions to engineering problems or to discover physical properties and biological configurations.
• Multiscale computing, which connects varying scales in the same problem, such as relating processes and properties at the tiniest scales of time and space to those at the largest scales.
• Multiphysics computations, which simulate physical processes of different kinds, such as a chemical reaction at its boundary with a material.
• Math software and libraries - modular codes that can be incorporated in programs from diverse science areas, allowing developers to quickly build software that makes difficult calculations efficiently and rapidly.