University Research | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

UT Austin Selected for New Nationwide High-Intensity Laser Network

The University of Texas at Austin will be a key player in LaserNetUS, a new national network of institutions operating high-intensity, ultrafast lasers. The overall project, funded over two years with $6.8 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, aims to help boost the country's global competitiveness in high-intensity laser research.

Chemistry Professor's Research Shocking the Battery Field

Feng Lin, an assistant professor in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, has had a productive year with over 10 published papers on battery research in 2018. Lin’s work covers the gamut of chemistry and materials science battery research, looking at micro-scale and basic science aspects, as well as macro-scale and applied science.

Overspending on Defense Arsenal Bankrupts a Plant's Economy

Defend or grow? Can plants do both at the same time? Michigan State University scientists might be inching closer to answering these questions. The answers matter. They could someday help us understand natural ecosystems or help farmers increase yields, without increasing dependence on chemicals to resist pests.

Atomic Path from Insulator to Metal Messier than Thought

Researchers have peeked behind the curtain of the ultrafast phase transition of vanadium dioxide and found its atomic theatrics are much more complicated than they thought. It’s a material that has fascinated scientists for decades for its ability to shift from being an electrical insulator to a conductor.

Shedding New Light on Photosynthesis

University of Michigan researchers have developed a powerful microscope that can map how light energy migrates in photosynthetic bacteria on timescales of one-quadrillionth of a second.

Naturally Occurring “Batteries” Fueled Organic Carbon Synthesis on Mars

A natural “battery” of briny liquids and volcanic minerals may have produced Mars’ organic carbon, according to new analysis of three Martian meteorites by a team including researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Visualizing “Unfurling” Microtubule Growth

Microtubule fibers are hollow rods made of much smaller tubulin subunits that spontaneously assemble at one end of the rod, but exactly how they do this inside the crowded environment of living cells has been a mystery. Now researchers at UC Davis have uncovered the mechanism that puts these blocks in place, illustrated in a new animation.

ASU Professor Wins Grants to Elucidate the Magic of Proteins

For Arizona State University’s Dmitry Matyushov, professor in the School of Molecular Sciences and the Department of Physics, years of studying how electrons make their way through some important protein molecules has been recently rewarded with two major grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE).

Middle Eastern Desert Dust on the Tibetan Plateau Could Affect the Indian Summer Monsoon

New atmospheric modeling study, led by William Lau, a research scientist at the University of Maryland’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), could explain the mechanism behind a century-old hypothesis.

Law of Soot Light Absorption: Current Climate Models Underestimate Warming by Black Carbon Aerosol

Rajan Chakrabarty, assistant professor in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, and William R. Heinson, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Chakrabarty’s lab, have discovered something new about soot, or rather, a new law that describes its ability to absorb light: the law of light absorption.

The Weak Force: Life Couldn't Exist Without It

David Armstrong, the Chancellor Professor of Physics at William & Mary, divides his time between Small Hall at William & Mary and the Department of Energy’s Jefferson Lab where he works on experiments involving the weak force, one of the four fundamental interactions that run the universe.

Research Uncovers the Spontaneous Polarization of Novel Ultrathin Materials

Associate professor Salvador Barraza-Lopez and Taneshwor Kaloni, a former post-doctoral researcher, studied ultrathin materials known as tin telluride (SnTe) with colleagues from the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Matter in China.