Projects aim to position underrepresented academic institutions to make major scientific contributions in support of DOE’s science mission
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $4.7 million in funding for 35 new grants to colleges and universities that are underrepresented in DOE’s foundational climate, Earth, and environmental science research investments.
These Research and Development Partnership Pilot grants, for projects lasting 18 to 22 months, will help provide technical assistance to build capacity and achieve the goal of broadening institutional participation in DOE’s science investments.
“With enormous challenges facing the world to solve the climate crisis and promote equitable solutions and practices, these grants will diversify and expand the talent pool in climate and Earth science disciplines in order for institutions that have been historically underrepresented in the Office of Science funding portfolio to exert even greater impacts on society,” said DOE Office of Science Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe. “These grants will position a broader pool of highly talented scientists to make significant contributions to addressing the toughest climate science challenges in support of the DOE mission.”
Selected projects will develop partnerships that focus on a wide range of climate and environmental science topics, from the role that atmospheric aerosols play in climate change to efforts to ensure that America’s most vulnerable communities will become more resilient to the pressures imposed by a warming world.
Partnerships will involve collaborations with DOE-supported projects at national laboratories, universities, and/or DOE user facilities, such as the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility.
Projects were chosen by competitive merit review under a DOE funding opportunity announcement sponsored by the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program within DOE’s Office of Science.
The opportunity was for all facilities and programs within DOE’s Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD), including ARM and Atmospheric System Research (ASR).
Following are the 35 principal investigators, their institutions, and selected projects:
- Adeyemi Adebiyi, University of California, Merced: Building collaboration to advance our understanding of regional climate impacts of dust in California’s San Joaquin Valley
- Henrique Barbosa, University of Maryland Baltimore County: Using LASSO to bridge the gap between model and observations and to learn about atmospheric convection
- Loretta Battaglia, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi: Connecting the Texas Gulf Coast with COMPASS to build research opportunities and career bridges for an underserved community
- Solomon Bililign, North Carolina A&T State University: Studies of optical and chemical properties of aged and fresh biomass burning absorbing aerosols for climate models
- Kenneth Carroll, New Mexico State University: Hydro‐EKG: In‐Stream Streaming‐potential (SP) Electrical Monitoring of the Lifeblood of Watersheds during Disturbance
- Tanya Cheeke, Washington State University: Building inclusive capacity and partnerships to tackle soil‐water‐microbe‐root feedbacks in forest regeneration after wildfires
- Umberto Ciri, University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez: Large‐scale offshore wind farm effects on weather and climate in Puerto Rico
- Richard Damoah, Morgan State University: Developing Urban Aerosol and Boundary Layer Observation and Research Capability at Morgan State University
- Aritra Dasgupta, New Jersey Institute of Technology: A Scientist‐in‐the‐Loop Data Analytics Framework for Intelligent Simulation Model Tuning and Validation
- Naresh Devineni, City University of New York d/b/a RFCUNY – City College: Understanding Climate and Extreme Weather Events in the Greater New York Area
- Minghui Diao, San Jose State University Research Foundation: Developing Partnership between San Jose State University and DOE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to Enhance Climate Research Equity and Inclusion
- Hamed Ebrahimian, University of Nevada: Environmental Extremes: Building a new research partnership between the University of Nevada Reno and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- Salah Aldin Faroughi, Texas State University: ESMs Latent Space Exploration for Uncertainty Quantification and Spatiotemporal Downscaling
- Daniel Foti, University of Memphis: Building partnerships for development of sustainable energy systems with atmospheric measurements
- Joseph Galewsky, University of New Mexico: Using stable isotopes in water vapor to study the interdependence of clouds, atmospheric aerosols, and precipitation processes
- Naruki Hiranuma, West Texas A&M University: Characterization and application of a high‐resolution microfluidic device in atmospheric ice nucleation research and integrated science teaching
- Dafeng Hui, Tennessee State University: Simulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions of a Peatland Ecosystem Under Global Warming and Elevated CO2 at the SPRUCE Experimental Site
- James Kang, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley: Greenhouse gas flux response in biochar- and compost‐amended urban soils under simulated soil hydrologic dynamics
- Jalene LaMontagne, DePaul University: Developing plans and partnerships for incorporating tree reproduction to understand Earth system change
- Sarah Ledford, Georgia State University: Broadening participation in (sub)Urban watershed Science in the Southeast (BUSS)
- Hongyi Li, University of Houston: A strategic partnership between the College of Engineering at University of Houston and Pacific Northwest National Lab
- Jianwei Li, Tennessee State University: On Improvement of Soil Organic Carbon Modeling and Simulation via Integrated Deep Learning and Data Assimilation Approaches
- Hamidreza Norouzi, City University of New York – New York City College of Technology: Sustainable DoE Partnerships to Advance Fundamental Research in Earth and Environmental System Sciences at an Underrepresented Institution
- Bruce Prince, Texas Southern University: Computational Modeling of Atmospheric Processes (CMAP) A Research Development and Partnership Pilot (RDPP) proposal
- Pallav Ray, Florida Institute of Technology: Surface Heat Flux and its Association with the MJO in the Tropical Western Pacific using ARM Observations
- Wendy Robertson, Central Michigan University: Expanding Collaborative Capacity to Address Climate Resiliency in the Great Lakes Region
- Cody Sheik, University of Minnesota Duluth: Multisystem feedbacks from a changing climate: Do altered hydrological dynamics control vadose zone carbon nutrient cycling and storage in shallow aquifer systems?
- Kenneth Tobin, Texas A&M International University: Characterization of Root Zone Soil Moisture and Herpetofaunal Biodiversity in the Southern Great Plains
- Allison Veach, University of Texas at San Antonio: Examining respiration and carbon flow in intermittent, urban rivers using novel chamber methodologies
- Yonggang Wang, State University of New York – SUNY Oswego: Using COMBLE observations to characterize boundary‐layer convective precipitation in Arctic cold air outbreaks
- Loren White, Jackson State University: Capabilities and Partnerships for Environmental Microclimate Investigations
- Jeffrey Wilcox, University of North Carolina at Asheville: Building research capacity in Southern Appalachian mountain wetlands
- Joseph Wilkins, Howard University: RDPP: Accelerating Diversity in DOE Climate Science and Resilience Research
- Xi Yang, University of Virginia: Building an interdisciplinary and interagency collaboration between DOE BER and the University of Virginia
- Haofei Zhang, University of California, Riverside: Collaboration with the ARM and EMSL Facilities to Study the Composition and Hygroscopicity Relationship in Atmospheric Aerosols.
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, through the Biological and Environmental Research program as part of the Atmospheric System Research program.