The Department of Energy EPSCoR program supports research projects related to its mission through two types of grants, Implementation and Laboratory Partnership Grants. All grant proposals are rigorously reviewed by the DOE Office of Science, where the federal EPSCoR program is housed.

Laboratory Partnership Grants

Laboratory Partnership grants have a 3-year term and fund up to $200,000 per year. They are applied for directly by the investigator and are not initiated or administered by the Nebraska EPSCoR office. As part of the application, DOE EPSCoR requires a letter of support from the Nebraska EPSCoR Director. Nebraska EPSCoR will release an announcement once the DOE Laboratory Partnership RFP is available that will include information about obtaining a letter of support from the Director. Check the Nebraska EPSCoR Requests for Proposal (RFP) page periodically for the announcement. For more information about the Laboratory Partnership grant application, go to the DOE EPSCoR website.

Implementation Grants

Implementation Grants are awarded for up to $2.5 million per year with an initial 3-year term and the possibility of a 3-year extension. Like the Laboratory Partnership Grants, the investigator must apply for the Implementation Grant directly, but the proposal must first be chosen to go forward by the State EPSCoR Committee through a pre-proposal vetting process.

Nebraska EPSCoR will release a call for pre-proposals once the DOE EPSCoR Implementation Grant RFP is available. Previous awards allowed a state to hold only one Implementation Grant at a time and submit only one proposal at a time, however, DOE EPSCoR is lifting this requirement in the next funding cycle. Check the Nebraska EPSCoR RFP page periodically for the announcement. Details of the pre-proposal selection process will be provided at that time. For more information about the Implementation Grants and more details on the awards offered, go to the DOE EPSCoR website.

Active DOE Awards in Nebraska

2009 Laboratory Partnership Grants, 3- year terms

$419,976 "Dynamic Optimized Advanced Scheduling of Bandwidth Demands for Large-Scale Science Applications." Dr. Byravamurthy Ramamurthy, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, UNL, in collaboration with Dr. Nageswara S. V. Rao, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This project seeks to enhance the capability of the DoE's ESnet by providing dynamic, optimized, advance scheduling of bandwidth demands required by large-scale science applications.

$420, 000 "Phase Transformations in Confined Nanosystems." Dr. Jeffrey Shield, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, UNL, in collaboration with Dr. Malcolm Stocks, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Dr. Mathew Kramer, Ames Laboratory. This project works to produce and characterize nanoscale alloy systems and study phase transformations that occur within these systems.

2008 Laboratory Partnership Grants, 3-year terms

$449,054 "Rational Design of Molecular Ferroelectric Materials and Nanostructures" Dr. Stephen Ducharme, Department of Physics and Astronomy, UNL, and Dr. James Takacs, Department of Chemistry, UNL, in collaboration with UNL visiting professor Dr. Vladimir Fridkin and Dr. Serge Nakhmanson from Argonne National Laboratory. The project seeks to improve understanding of the fundamental mechanism of ferroelectricity and how the molecular interactions described by quantum chemistry give rise to macroscopic spontaneous polarization.

$425,352 "Measurement of the proton-antiproton luminosity at the DZERO experiment at the Tevatron Collider at Fermilab" Dr. Gregory R. Snow, Department of Physics and Astronomy, UNL, in collaboration with Dr. Dmitri Denisov, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. This project addresses the human resources needs of the experiment and ensures a reliable luminosity measurement.