EMSL’s mission as a national scientific user facility is to lead molecular-level discoveries for the Department of Energy and its Office of Biological and Environmental Research that translate to predictive understanding and accelerated solutions for national energy and environmental challenges.
Welcome to EMSL. EMSL is a national scientific user facility that is funded and sponsored by DOE's Office of Biological & Environmental Research.
What is a user facility? Our scientific capabilities – people, instruments and facilities – are available for use by the global research community. We support BER's mission to provide innovative solutions to the nation's environmental and energy production challenges in areas such as atmospheric aerosols, feedstocks, global carbon cycling, biogeochemistry, subsurface science and energy materials.
What types of research does EMSL focus on? A deep understanding of molecular-level processes is critical to gaining a predictive, systems-level understanding of the impacts of aerosols and terrestrial systems on climate change; making clean, affordable, abundant energy; and cleaning up our legacy wastes. Visit our Science page to learn how EMSL leads in these areas, through our science themes.
Teamwork is in our DNA. We approach science differently than many institutions. We believe in - and have proven - the value of drawing together members of the scientific community and assembling the people, resources and facilities to solve problems. It's in our DNA, since our founder Dr. Wiley's initial call to create a user facility that would facilitate “synergism between the physical, mathematical, and life sciences.” We integrate experts across disciplines; experiment with theory; and collaborate with other user facilities with joint calls for proposals.
We provide an enriched, customized experience that allows users to connect with our people and capabilities in an environment where we focus on solving problems. We collaborate with researchers from academia, government labs and industry, and from nearly all 50 states and from other countries.
Work with us. Scientists can propose research that utilizes any of our 150 experimental instruments or our high-performance supercomputer at typically no cost through a variety of proposal opportunities. Our technical capabilities include unique suites of instrumentation such as mass spectrometers, microscopes, nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, surface characterization tools, and many others. We work with nearly 800 scientists a year to advance their research. We encourage scientists whose work is relevant to BER's missions to submit proposals through our annual call or other proposal opportunities.
As we work with users and others, we pride ourselves on the values that underpin all of our actions and decisions:
- Integrity
- Collaboration
- Creativity
- Impact
- Courage.
EMSL is operated by and located on the campus of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, located in Richland, Washington.