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.

The HEP program is pursuing the following challenges:

• The Search for Unification: While our current theory of fundamental particles and forces, the Standard Model, explains much, it is mathematically flawed and incomplete. What is the source of mass? The Standard Model attributes mass to a "Higgs" field, but no such field has yet been observed. Theoretical explorations beyond the Standard Model suggest that the complex patterns of particles and forces we observe today arose from a much simpler universe at the extremely high energies that prevailed in its first moments.
• The Role of Neutrinos: The neutrino is a ghostly particle that hardly interacts with matter but plays a key role in physics and astrophysics. The Standard Model treats neutrinos as massless, but recent experimental results provide compelling evidence that they have mass. Different mass states of a neutrino evolve at different rates, resulting in an oscillating mixture of neutrino types or "Flavors." Thus a muon neutrino might change to an electron or tau neutrino by the time it has traveled a few hundred miles. Such oscillations have been demonstrated by several experiments, proving that neutrino flavor mixing does occur. Measuring the complex pattern of neutrino masses is important, because they may well be related to the energy scale at which fundamental forces unify, and may help explain the dominance of matter over antimatter in the universe.
• Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and the Accelerating Universe: Our understanding of what the universe is made of has changed radically. Recent studies of supernovae by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have shown that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The outward push is attributed to "dark energy," a remarkable and unexpected discovery. This new form of energy may account for as much as 70% of the universe. Another 25% seems to be made of invisible "dark matter," while normal matter (the kind described by the Standard Model, which includes all the stars and galaxies) contributes only 5%. There seems to be no antimatter, although plenty of it should have been produced in the early universe. A dedicated space telescope is being designed, as a joint project with NASA, to chart the expansion history of the universe and help us solve the mystery of dark energy. Experiments are underway to search for dark matter particles coming from space or being made in accelerators. The asymmetry between matter and antimatter may be related to neutrinos, or to a subtle difference between quarks and antiquarks that is being investigated using the B Factory electron-positron collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Office of Nuclear Physics

The mission of the Nuclear Physics (NP) program is to foster fundamental research in nuclear physics that will provide new insights and advance our knowledge on the nature of matter and energy and develop the scientific knowledge, technologies and trained workforce that are needed to underpin the Department of Energy's missions for nuclear-related national security, energy, and environmental quality.

The NP research program investigates all forms of nuclear matter, including that of the early universe, measures the quark structure of the proton and neutron, and studies the mysterious and important neutrino. Rapid advances in electronic circuits, computing, and superconducting technologies have enabled the construction of powerful accelerator, detector, and computing facilities. These provide the experimental and theoretical means to investigate nuclear systems ranging from tiny nucleons to stars and supernovae.

NP research addresses these opportunities through research programs that respond to the following challenges:

• The Early Universe; Can we find a way today, on earth, to study the early universe as it was soon after the Big Bang?
• Structure of the Nucleon: How do the basic quark "building blocks" bind together with gluons to form the proton and neutron, the nucleons that make up nuclei, and how do we account for the nucleon spin?
• Neutrinos: Can we measure the basic properties of neutrinos?
• Origin of the Elements: What is the origin of the elements, how do stars evolve, and what is the source of high-energy cosmic rays and cosmic gamma rays?

Office of Basic Energy Sciences

The mission of the Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program - a multipurpose, scientific research effort - is to foster and support fundamental research to expand the scientific foundations for new and improved energy technologies and for understanding and mitigating the environmental impacts of energy use. The portfolio supports work in the natural sciences, emphasizing fundamental research in materials sciences, chemistry, geosciences, and aspects of biosciences.

The Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering supports a broad-based research program to provide a fundamental understanding of the atomistic basis of materials properties and behavior, which is necessary to make materials perform better through innovative materials design, synthesis, and processing. The program fulfills DOE missions by the development of materials that improve the efficiency, economy, environmental acceptability, and safety in energy generation, conversion, transmission, and utilization.

Research activities in condensed matter and materials physics focus on the control of materials properties and the discovery of new properties through the exploration of co-operative and correlation effects which can lead to the formation of new particles, new phases of matter and unexpected phenomena The materials discovery, design, and synthesis area supports fundamental research in the design, synthesis and discovery of novel materials and material constructs, and the development of innovative materials synthesis and processing methods. Research activities in scattering and instrumentation sciences encompass research in materials characterization using electron, neutron, and x-ray scattering capabilities. Research includes experiment and theory that seeks to achieve a fundamental understanding of the atomic, electronic, and magnetic structures and excitations of materials as well as the relationship of these structures and excitations to the physical properties of materials.

Two of the scientific challenges in this division are:

• Science at the Nanoscale: Can we achieve a fundamental understanding of nanoscale assemblies of materials -- structures 1000 times smaller than a human hair? At the nanoscale, materials have properties distinctly different from those with which we are familiar.
• Materials by Design: Can we design materials having predictable and yet often unusual properties? This will require "bottoms-up" atomic and molecular design, the use of nanostructured materials, novel routes for materials synthesis and processing, and parallel fabrication design and construction of multicomponent molecular devices and machines having desired properties -- optical, mechanical, catalytic, electrical, tribological. These might form the basis of systems such as nanometer-scale chemical factories, molecular pumps, sensors, and self-assembling electronic/photonic devices.

The Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Energy Biosciences division supports experimental and theoretical research to provide fundamental understanding of chemical transformations and energy flow in systems relevant to the missions of the Department of Energy. This knowledge serves as a basis for the development of new processes for the generation, storage, and use of energy and for mitigation of the environmental impacts of energy use.

Research activities in atomic, molecular, and optical sciences; gas-phase chemical physics; and condensed phase and interfacial molecular science emphasize structural and dynamical studies of atoms, molecules, and nanostructures and the descriptions of their interactions with external stimuli at full quantum detail. Research activities in solar photochemistry; photosynthetic systems; and physical biosciences emphasize the molecular mechanisms involved in the capture of light energy and its conversion into chemical and electrical energy through biological and chemical pathways. Research activities in catalysis science; separations and analysis; heavy element chemistry; and geosciences emphasize the characterization, control, and optimization of chemical transformations.

Two of the scientific challenges in this division are:

• Chemical Reactivity: Can we predict and control chemical reactivity -- the making and breaking of chemical bonds to fabricate desired products while minimizing or eliminating unwanted products? The convergence of chemical catalysis and biological catalysis coupled with new, exotic techniques such as laserbased control, may make it possible to control reactivity with a precision found only in nature and to fashion novel products not seen in nature.
• The Molecular Foundations of Natural Processes: Can we harness, control, or mimic the exquisite complexity of natural processes? Living organisms represent the most sophisticated use of the elements to create materials and functional complexes through chemical processing. Nature's achievements allow us to set goals for the development of materials and systems with the enhanced properties, including the ability to self-assemble, self-repair, sense, respond, and evolve.

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 and Environmental Sciences Division includes the Climate Sciences Program, which does research 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.

The Environmental Sciences Program provides fundamental scientific information and understanding to address the impacts of the nation's energy production on the environment. DOE is responsible for what has been described as the largest, most complex, and diverse collection of environmental remediation challenges in the nation. While some of the problems are tractable and require only time and money to resolve, a large fraction of them cannot be resolved with existing knowledge and technology. It is the need for solutions to this subset of environmental remediation problems that drives this research program. Research focuses on

1. understanding the processes that influence and control the environmental mobility of DOE-relevant contaminants;
2. using that understanding to identify and develop novel approaches to remediation; and
3. developing the tools and technologies needed to advance science in these areas.

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

• Genomics Research - to underpin the development of biotechnology solutions for energy, the environment, and carbon sequestration. This program will develop genome-scale technologies needed to understand the workings of microbial and plant systems from proteomics to metabolomics to regulatory networks to ecogenomics. A central element of Genomics:GTL is the development of the computational capabilities and systems needed to model complex biological systems.
• Low Dose Radiation Research - to understand and characterize the risks to human health from exposures to low levels of radiation.
• Medical Science Technology Research - to develop innovative diagnostic and treatment solutions for application to critical problems in human health.

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.