DOE’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program Selects 80 Outstanding U.S. Graduate Students

WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science has selected 80 graduate students representing 27 states for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program’s 2021 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 the U.S. position at the forefront of discovery and innovation.

“For decades, DOE has cultivated the expertise to meet the nation’s greatest scientific challenges. Now more than ever, we need to invest in a diverse, talented pipeline of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who will be the future science and innovation leaders of this country,” said Under Secretary of Science and Innovation Geraldine Richmond. “I’m thrilled these outstanding students will help us tackle critical research at our labs, and I know their futures are bright.”

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 870 U.S. graduate awardees from 155 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, more than 40% of SCGSR awardees are women, about 14% of the awardees attend minority serving institutions (MSIs), and 17.5% are from institutions in jurisdictions that are part of the Establishing Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCOR).

SCGSR awardees work on research projects of significant importance to the Office of Science mission that address societal challenges at national and international scales. Projects in this cohort span the eight Office of Science research programs and four additional priority convergence research topical areas—Microelectronics, Data Science, Conversation Laws and Symmetries, and Accelerator Science. Awards were made through the SCGSR program’s second of two annual solicitation cycles for FY 2021.

Applications for the ongoing 2022 Solicitation 1 cycle are due 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 4, 2022. 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 national laboratories. The award cohort from the 2022 Solicitation 1 cycle is expected to be announced around September 2022.

A list of the 80 awardees, their institutions, host DOE laboratory/facility, and priority research areas of the projects can be found at https://science.osti.gov/WDTS/SCGSR/SCGSR-Awards.

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