Welcome to the EFRC Community Website

A collaborative space for the more than 1,800 senior investigators, students, postdoctoral fellows, and technical staff involved in the EFRC program and the extended energy science community.

Newsletter

Summer 2023

catalyst

Programmable Catalysts: A New Strategy for Accelerating Catalyst Performance

Catalysts play a vital role in speeding up reactions by reducing the energy input required for chemical transformations. In fact, approximately 90% of industrially produced chemicals rely on catalysts at some stage of their production. Take ammonia and hydrogen, for example, both crucial for the clean energy future. These two molecules can store intermittent energy sources, like wind or solar energy, in the form of chemical bonds. They can also be conveniently transported as liquids like the…

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Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs)

The EFRC Program is a basic research program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) that brings together creative, multidisciplinary, and multi-institutional team of scientific researchers to address the toughest grand scientific challenges at the forefront of fundamental energy science research.

These centers provide the foundation for collaborative efforts that targets both discovery science and use-inspired basic research, they aim to address priority research directions and opportunities identified by a series of BES workshop and roundtable reports. They take full advantage of powerful new tools for characterizing, understanding, modeling, and manipulating matter from atomic to macroscopic length scales. They also train the next-generation scientific workforce by attracting talented students and postdoctoral researchers interested in energy science.

Sep 27

2023 EFRC-Hub-CMS-CCS Principal Investigators’ Meeting

The 2023 EFRC-Hub-CMS-CCS Principal Investigators’ Meeting invited the communities to use their creativity and imaginations to produce science-inspired images and poetry for the 2023 Science in Poetry Art Contest. Come and explore this year’s creative entries and vote for your favorite poetry art inspired by science!

The People’s Choice voting will end on September 15, 2023, 11:59 pm EST.

Learn More

Contests

The Energy Sciences Energy Frontier Research Program traditionally sponsors a community contest during the biannual EFRC Principal Investigators’ Meetings. These contests, from Poetry of Science to Life at the Frontiers of Energy Research Video to Sound of Science Podcasts, challenge members of the community across a wide range of team science endeavors. The aim of these competitions is to educate, inspire, and entertain an intelligent but not expert audience about the extraordinary science, innovation, and people in the Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC), Energy Innovation Hubs (Hub), and Computational Materials and Chemical Sciences Awards (CMS/CCS). Navigate below to learn more about each of the competitions held previously.

Science in the time of covid.

First Place

Nevertheless she persisted (over Zoom)

Quantum Sensing and Quantum Materials (QSQM) Led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Winners All Entries

IDREAm

Overall Winner

Sound to Analyze, Interpret, and Understand Data from Experiment and Theory

Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials (IDREAM) led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Winners All Entries

Poetry

First Place

Afterlife of a photon

Life was so short.
Born in a fiery dance of heat and pressure and...

Center for Lignocellulose Structure and Formation

[...]

Winners All Entries

Powering your car

Overall Winner

Powering your car with sun light

Center for Lignocellulose Structure and Formation led by Pennsylvania State University

Winners All Entries

Energy Frontier

For exemplary explanation of the role of an Energy Frontier Research Center

Heart of the Solution - Energy Frontiers

Center for Solar and Thermal Energy Conversion led by the University of Michigan.

Winners All Entries

OVERALL WINNER

Salt for the Earth

Molten Salts in Extreme Environments (MSEE) led by Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Winners All Entries