Over the past decade, the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) has supported a major expansion of the Nation’s civilian supercomputing capabilities. ASCR’s Jaguar Cray XT5 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is currently the fastest supercomputer in the world. ASCR’s support for facilities and research in applied mathematics, computer science, and computational science has helped to make supercomputing modeling and simulation one of the fastest growing and most productive new areas of scientific research, forging new knowledge in such diverse fields as energy, climate, and nuclear physics.

ASCR’s mission priorities are to provide the foundational science:

• To develop and advance supercomputing capabilities for the U.S. scientific community
• To advance scientific understanding through high-performance modeling and simulation
• To develop the underlying software and algorithms for extreme scale computing
• To develop advanced networking and collaboration infrastructure and tools to enable scientists worldwide to work together

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The Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) has supported research leading to six Nobel Prizes over the past twenty years. Today, BES is equipping scientists with a powerful new generation of tools—including advanced light sources and neutron scattering sources—for probing matter on the atomic and molecular scales. With the establishment of 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers and five Nanoscale Science Research Centers, BES is fostering the fundamental scientific discoveries needed to meet our energy, environmental, and national security challenges.

BES’s mission priorities are to provide the foundational science:

• To discover and design new materials with novel properties through observation and control of materials at the atomic and molecular scales
• To predict processes underlying physical and chemical transformations
• To probe, understand, and control the interactions of phonons, photons, electrons, and ions with matter to direct and control energy flow in materials and chemical systems
  And
• To conceive, construct, and operate major scientific user facilities to probe the most fundamental electronic and atomic properties of matter

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Since initiating the Human Genome Project in 1986, the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) has spearheaded the development of modern genomics-based biology and played a major role in fostering the contemporary biotechnology revolution, while at the same time supporting major research on climate change.

Today BER is developing the science to enable the cost-effective production of cellulosic biofuels and improving our ability to understand, predict, and mitigate climate change.

BER’s mission priorities are to provide the foundational science:

• To support the development of cellulosic biofuels as a secure and sustainable national energy resource
• To understand the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on Earth’s climate
• To predict the behavior of underground contaminants at DOE sites
• To develop new tools to explore the interfaces between biological and physical sciences

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Fusion is the energy that powers the sun and the stars. The Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) is at the forefront of the effort to bring clean, abundant fusion energy to earth to meet the world’s growing energy needs. With its partnership in ITER—an international effort to build a self-sustaining fusion reactor—and its support of domestic research in plasma science, FES is leading the way toward science that could help define a new energy future for the globe.

FES’s mission priorities are to provide the foundational science:

• To advance research on magnetically confined plasmas to develop the science needed to create a sustainable fusion energy source
• To support research exploring the feasibility of the alternative inertial confinement approach as a fusion energy source
• To support the research required to design the special materials needed to survive the extremes of a burning plasma environment
• To advance plasma science for a broader range of science and science-based applications, from astrophysics to manufacturing

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The Office of High Energy Physics (HEP) supports investigations at the far reaches of our knowledge of matter, energy, and the universe. HEP has played a major role in the development of our most fundamental understanding of the physical world—the Standard Model of particle physics—and has supported research leading to six Nobel Prizes in the past two decades. HEP-supported researchers explore the energy frontier with powerful particle accelerators designed to discover as-yet-undetected particles, search the intensity frontier with accelerator systems specifically designed to detect rare subatomic events, and investigate the cosmic frontier with detectors in space, on the earth’s surface, and underground.

HEP’s mission priorities are to provide the foundational science:

• To understand the properties and interactions of elementary particles and fundamental forces of nature
• To obtain new insights about the most fundamental constituents of matter and energy, space and time
• To construct and operate major scientific user facilities
• To steward a national particle accelerator science program

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In 2005, scientists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, supported by the Office of Nuclear Physics (NP), created a new form of matter—a plasma of quarks and gluons thought to have existed only instants after the Big Bang—and astonished the scientific world with the news that this plasma behaved not as a gas but as a perfect liquid. NP continues to support research probing the most fundamental structures of nuclear matter and seeking to learn how the cosmos created the elements that define our physical world.

NP’s mission priorities are to provide the foundational science:

• To understand the structure of nuclear matter
• To understand how elements have been formed since the origins of the cosmos
• To understand the fundamental properties of the neutron and develop a better understanding of the neutrino
• To construct and operate major scientific user facilities
• To steward a national program in isotope production and development
• To develop new detector and accelerator technologies that will advance NP mission priorities
• To foster integration of NP research with applied sciences

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The mission of the Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) program is to contribute to the national effort that will ensure that DOE and the Nation have a sustained pipeline of highly skilled and diverse science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers.

WDTS’s provides a continuum of opportunities to the Nation's students and STEM teachers, including:

• The National Science Bowl® for middle and high school students
• Internships at DOE national laboratories for undergraduates
• Graduate research fellowships for students pursuing advanced degrees in basic science
• Career development programs for STEM educators

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The Office of Science manages the Department of Energy’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. The purpose of the SBIR and STTR programs is to stimulate technological innovation in small businesses to meet federal agency mission needs. DOE’s SBIR/STTR programs target U.S. companies with fewer than 500 employees. The Department continually seeks applications for R&D in a wide variety of energy technology topics from small businesses with strong research capabilities in science or engineering.

In accordance with statute, each year the federal agencies that participate in SBIR and STTR set aside 2.5% and 0.3% of their extramural R&D budgets for SBIR and STTR, respectively. These funds become the basis for annual solicitations for merit-review-based competitive awards.

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The Office of Project Assessment (OPA) provides independent advice to the Director of the Office of Science (SC) relating to activities essential to constructing and operating major research facilities. In addition, this office provides professional management and staff support to SC program offices. The SC Office of Project Assessment’s critical oversight and support of SC’s substantial project and construction portfolio helps to ensure that SC projects are delivered to specification, on time and on budget.

The primary responsibilities of the Office of Project Assessment are:

• Conducting technical, cost, schedule and management peer reviews ("Lehman" reviews) of SC construction projects and large experimental equipment;
• Directing and supervising the development, initiation, and implementation of policies, plans and procedures for design, fabrication, construction, commissioning, operation and decommissioning of research/conventional facilities and devices required to support the SC program offices;
• Representing the Director of Science in meetings with DOE, Office of Management and Budget, Congress, and other oversight or investigatory bodies on all matters involving the planning, design, construction and operation of research facilities; and
• Acting as the SC Secretariat for the Energy Systems Acquisition Advisory Board (ESAAB) and the Project Baseline Change Control (BCC) process.

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