Introduction
With the 21st Century dawns what most have called the “biological century”-an era when advances in biology, spurred by achievements in genomic research, including the sequencing of the human genome, will bring revolutionary and unconventional solutions to some of our most pressing and expensive challenges in health, energy, the environment, and national security. We will understand how living organisms interact with and respond to their environments so well that we will be able to use biology to produce clean energy, remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and help clean up the environment.
The BER program supports fundamental research in climate change, environmental remediation, genomics, proteomics, radiation biology, and medical sciences. These efforts span across many fields of science and that effectively bring together many different disciplines, including biology, chemistry, engineering, computing, and the physical sciences. BER also supports leading edge research facilities used by public and private sector scientists across range of BER disciplines. BER works with other federal agencies to coordinate research across all of its programs. BER validates its long-range goals through its advisory committee, the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee (BERAC).
