ORNL Initiatives and LDRD Research Priorities

Brief descriptions of ORNL’s research initiatives for 2009 are listed below.

Advanced Energy Systems

This initiative seeks to stimulate the development of new technologies that have the potential to supply, distribute, and utilize energy with high efficiency, at low cost, and with low environmental risks. It is our expectation that this effort will lead to additional Laboratory capabilities that will support the DOE energy missions. Research areas being emphasized during FY 2009 are transportation technologies that move beyond conventional strategies, energy storage technologies for transportation and electric utility applications, electric reliability technologies that strengthen the U.S. energy grid and can respond in a proactive manner when the system is stressed, and new technologies for the nuclear fuel cycle such as new methods for spent fuel management.

Emerging Science and Technology for Sustainable Bioenergy

The intent of this initiative is to focus, integrate, and strengthen the Laboratory’s comprehensive bioenergy-relevant research capabilities including geospatial science and technology to support the Nation’s creation of a sustainable bioenergy generation and delivery infrastructure. In addition, because bioenergy infrastructure is inescapably and tightly bound to geography, the unique competencies in geospatial science and technology that this bioenergy-focused initiative will necessarily develop will also have an enabling impact on scientific advancement in other disciplinary areas such as climate change science, computational science, national and homeland security, environmental science, and transportation.

National Security Science and Technology

ORNL provides innovative technical solutions to compelling national problems that materially improve global, national, and homeland security. This initiative is designed to build strong capabilities that will underpin enduring leadership roles for ORNL in meeting these security needs. During FY 2009, proposals are sought in the following areas: sensors and detectors for chemical, biological, and nuclear threats; mobile power sources; computer and computational science for national security; materials research for security applications; and biothreat modeling and detection.

Neutron Sciences

The intent of the Neutron Sciences Initiative is to establish ORNL as the world’s foremost center for neutron sciences, providing unprecedented new capabilities for understanding the structure and properties of materials. This initiative will stimulate new research directions, proof-of-principle experiments, and technical innovations essential to achieving leadership in neutron science. Research priorities for FY 2009 focus on the following five themes: novel applications of neutron scattering, non-equilibrium problems and unique capabilities, novel instrumentation concepts, scientific challenges of power upgrades for spallation neutron sources, and biological applications of neutron scattering.

Science for Extreme Environments: Advanced Materials and Interfacial Processes for Energy

The purpose of this initiative is to develop concepts that will lead to the design, discovery, and synthesis of new materials with desired functionality through control at the atomic and molecular level. Special emphasis will be focused on the unique science that occurs in extreme environments demanded by future energy technologies, as outlined in the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences workshop reports. Proposals are sought that will advance our understanding of fundamental physical and chemical processes related to extreme environments and focus on scientific issues that underlie today’s limitations in materials and interfacial processes for advanced energy systems. This understanding, along with discovery of entirely new materials and interfacial processes, will, in the longer term, enable the development of new technologies for energy production, storage and utilization.

Systems Biology: Enabling Biotechnological Solutions to National Challenges Related to Energy and Environment

Through this initiative ORNL seeks to build capabilities at the forefront of fundamental systems biology and bioengineering in addressing grand challenges related to energy production and the environment. Proposals are sought that involve integrated approaches to the links of biological systems with energy, carbon, and water missions. Specifically, we encourage new ideas focused in the following areas: use of biological or bio-inspired processes; understanding how ecosystems respond to global and regional change; understanding how organisms react to their environment; and identifying the composition and function of biomolecular complexes with special emphasis on biomembranes.

Ultrascale Computing

The intent of the this initiative is to improve ORNL’s leadership position in computer and computational sciences as measured by our scientific and engineering contributions and our ability to deliver new insights and to achieve breakthroughs with broad impact to U.S. scientific leadership and national security. Dramatic advances in the power and performance of computers, networks, and data-storage facilities are opening new pathways to the modeling and simulation of physical, chemical, and biological systems and providing new insights into a host of complex science and engineering problems. Proposals are sought in four areas for FY 2009: mathematics and computer science including programming models and multiscale application techniques; knowledge discovery; computational science with an emphasis on energy systems simulation, computational systems biology/medicine, and nanoscience; and cyber/information security with the goals of identifying and evaluating threats and improving protections for electronic information systems, networks, and infrastructure.

Understanding Climate Change Impacts: Energy, Carbon, and Water

The intent of this initiative is to foster interdisciplinary collaborative research for developing reliable integrated end-to-end climate prediction and assessment capabilities and develop unique competencies in climate change, climate impacts science, computational science, observational capabilities, national and homeland security, environmental science, energy usage and production, carbon management, and geospatial science and technology. To address these objectives, proposals are sought in the following areas: (1) improved formulation of the carbon and water cycle in global models of the climate system, (2) evaluating regional-scale climate predictability on seasonal to decadal time scales, and (3) evaluation and synthesis of climate change impacts.