The US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program is now accepting applications from graduate students for doctoral dissertation/thesis research opportunities at DOE national laboratories. The program provides supplemental awards for PhD students to conduct part of their thesis research at a DOE laboratory for 3 to 12 consecutive months. Applications are due 16 May 2017 at 5:00 pm Eastern Time.
The research opportunity is expected to advance the graduate students’ overall doctoral thesis by providing supplemental funds for awardees to conduct part of their thesis research at a host DOE laboratory in collaboration with a DOE laboratory scientist within a defined award period.
SCGSR has identified six priority research areas for the SCGSR 2017 Solicitation 1 and applicants must be pursuing graduate research in an area aligned with one or more of these: advanced scientific and computing research, basic energy sciences, biological and environmental research, fusion energy sciences, high energy physics, and nuclear physics.
Under basic energy sciences, the “basic geosciences” research area involves “basic research on imaging strain fields, inferring stress through constitutive relations, and measuring and predicting the evolution of permeability and porosity and fracture networks in response to changes in stress in the earth’s subsurface and in response to precipitation/dissolution reactions. Example topics include induced seismicity, rock physics and integrity, poroelastic deformation, slow fracture nucleation and growth, and large-scale strain measurements with GPS and InSAR [Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar] techniques. Research focused on permeability and porosity evolution and dynamics is particularly well aligned with this priority area and is one of the key focus areas identified in the Basic Energy Sciences Roundtable Report, Controlling Subsurface Fractures and Fluid Flow: A Basic Research Agenda (May 2015).
Exclusions: Topics of research that will not be considered in this area are wellbore integrity, advanced drilling methods, hydraulic fracturing technologies, remediation tools, stimulation methods, and specific CO2 sequestration or nuclear waste repository performance assessment, all of which are covered under other DOE programs.”
For the complete list of research topics included under each priority research area, eligibility criteria for applying, and key deadlines, visit the SCGSR page.