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Recovery Act Activities Berkeley Lab Information Related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 20099

Berkeley Lab
Projects

infrastructure

Advanced Light Source User Support Building
Total Project Cost: $35.1 million
ARRA funding: $14.7 million

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) User Support Building is a three-story, 30,928 gross-square-foot building that will house user-support operations at the ALS. It will include office and lab space for some 80 researchers. The $35-million project is funded by the DOE Office of Science. It will house experiment assembly spaces, conference rooms, and labs. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2011. Go here for more information.

Bevatron demolition
Total Project Cost: $50 million
ARRA funding: $14.3 million

Building 51, which houses the Bevatron, is an approximately 125,000 gross-square-foot, steel-frame structure built in the early 1950s. The building is located in the west-central part of Berkeley Lab and occupies approximately 2.25 acres. During its operation from 1954 until 1993, the Bevatron was among the world’s leading particle accelerators, and during the 1950s and 1960s, four Nobel Prizes were awarded for work conducted in whole or in part there.

The objective of the project is to remove a substandard building and its contents. Neither the Bevatron nor Building 51 are needed by the Lab. Building 51 is seismically inadequate, old, and deteriorating. Demolition would free up the site for future development, although no specific plan or project has been identified. The demolition began in August 2008 and was scheduled to last until October 2011; the ARRA funding will allow the project to finish ahead of schedule. Go here for more information. Go here for an FAQ. This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE Office of Science.

Building 2 (research infrastructure)
Total Project Cost: $2.9 million
ARRA funding: $2.9 million

Building 2 is one of Berkeley Lab’s primary research buildings, standing four stories tall with 85,000 square feet of space. It houses researchers from the Chemical Sciences Division studying x-ray science; specifically, they are using high-powered laser systems to create new sources of ultrafast femto-second (10-15) and atto-second (10-18) x-rays. Also in the building are scientists from the Materials Science Division using the Nanowriter to make the world’s highest-resolution x-ray microscopes and other x-ray equipment to conduct studies at the frontiers of atomic physics.

With increasing use of more powerful computers, lasers and other equipment, a stable cooling system is essential for the stability and resolution of experiments. This project will upgrade the cooling system in this 1988 building. This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE Office of Science. The project is scheduled to be completed in July 2010.

Building 6 (upgrade air handlers)
Total Project Cost: $1.5 million
ARRA funding: $1.5 million

Building 6 is the home of the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility that generates intense light for scientific and technological research. As one of the world’s brightest sources of ultraviolet and soft x-ray beams, the ALS’ 40 beam lines makes previously impossible studies possible. This project will replace three aging air handling units that had some vibration issues, negatively impacting the scientific studies, with higher capacity and higher efficiency units.

This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE Office of Science. The project is scheduled to be completed in September 2010.

Building 62 (lab space and infrastructure)
Total Project Cost: $2.9 million
ARRA funding: $2.9 million

Approximately 4,200 gross square feet of general purpose laboratories and infrastructure will be upgraded on the third floor of Building 62 to consolidate the significant strengths in the area of batteries and energy storage under one roof. Batteries are an enabling technology that can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and allow for significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. With increased emphasis in all areas of battery research and development, Berkeley Lab will be playing a greater role in ensuring that the fundamental research leads to development of new energy storage devices that can reach the marketplace and have a tangible impact on the problems of global climate change.

Creating state-of-the-art research facilities for existing and new initiatives in the electrochemical energy storage and conversion area will help bring the necessary resources for discovery and development of new advanced battery and fuel cell systems. This research facility will allow for a significant impact in connecting the fundamental developments in energy storage research to the real world problems that prevent these batteries from being used in commercial large-scale applications. We envision consolidating the various synthesis and diagnostic tools to allow these facilities to be open for use to researchers from Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, and industry.

Berkeley Lab will also be expanding its efforts in various areas of battery research with new subcontracts at various universities and national labs, and with hiring within the Lab. Further expansions in both personnel and equipment are expected in the next few years, in keeping with the increase in emphasis on energy storage research.

This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE Office of Science. The project is scheduled to be completed in September 2010.

Building 66 (lab space and infrastructure)
Total Project Cost: $4.0 million
ARRA funding: $4.0 million

Approximately 12,000 gross square feet of general purpose laboratories and offices will be upgraded on the second and third floors of Building 66. Renovated space will have ultralow vibration, ultralow electromagnetic field, and ultralow acoustic noise space for instrumentation capable of imaging individual atoms and their properties and interactions.

The space will be used to house research on “meta-materials,” engineered materials whose underlying structure can alter the overall response to electrical and magnetic fields. Berkeley Lab scientists are working on nanoscale lasers and other metamaterials that could behave as a “superlens,” useful in imaging objects with detail finer than allowed by the diffraction limit, or a “cloaking device” to render objects invisible to a specific wavelength of light, paving the way for more powerful microscopes and faster computers.

This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE Office of Science. The project is scheduled to be completed in September 2010.

Grizzly Substation (modernize transformer bank)
Total Project Cost: $5.1 million
ARRA funding: $5.0 million

This project will replace the aged and failing transformer bank at the Grizzly Substation, which serves the entire Berkeley Lab, with a modern, high-energy efficient transformer. This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE Office of Science. The project is scheduled to be completed in July 2010.

Seismic Upgrade: Phase 2
Total Project Cost: $97.1 million
ARRA funding: $15.0 million

The Seismic Phase 2 project includes four main components: modernization of Building 74, the Life Sciences Building, including upgrades to building systems and 28,000 to 45,382 gross square feet (gsf) of laboratory/office space; construction of a new 35,000 to 43,000 gsf General Purpose Laboratory for Life Sciences, which will be LEED Gold certified; seismic stabilization of Building 85, the Hazardous Waste Handling Facility; and demolition of seismically “very poor” and “poor” (University of California Seismic Rating) space to offset the new construction square footage.

The Recovery Act funding will be used for the modernization of Building 74, which is scheduled to be completed in July 2012. The entire seismic upgrade is scheduled to be completed in January 2015. This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE Office of Science.

computing

Advanced Networking Initiative (ESnet)
Total Project Cost: $62.0 million
ARRA funding: $62.0 million

ESnet, the Department of Energy’s high-performance networking facility managed by Berkeley Lab, is receiving $62.0 million for the Advanced Networking Initiative. ESnet will develop a prototype 100 gigbits per second (Gbps) Ethernet network to connect DOE supercomputer centers at speeds 10 times faster than current technology. As part of the Advanced Network Initiative’s approximately $59 million investment in new networking equipment and services, about $8 million to $9 million will go towards a national-scale network testbed for use by the research community and industry to test out new technologies, protocols and applications. The testbed will consist of advanced network devices and components assembled to give network and middleware researchers the capabilities to prototype ESnet capabilities anticipated in the next decade. As host of the testbed, ESnet will develop strategies to move mature technologies from testing mode to production service. For more information, click here.

Climate 100
Total Project Cost: $201,000
ARRA funding: $201,000

As global climate change researchers generate increasingly large amounts of data, sharing the data efficiently and reliably becomes a growing challenge. Climate 100 will bring together middleware and network researchers at Berkeley Lab to develop the needed tools and techniques for moving unprecedented amounts of data and effectively using planned high-speed networks of 100 gigabits per second being developed under the Advanced Networking Initiative. For more information, click here.

Cloud Computing (Magellan)
Total Project Cost: $16.4 million
ARRA funding: $16.4 million

Cloud computing is gaining traction in the commercial world, but can such an approach also meet the computing and data storage demands of the nation’s scientific community? This new program will examine cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient computing paradigm for scientists to accelerate discoveries in a variety of disciplines, including analysis of scientific data sets in biology, climate change and physics.

Cloud computing centralizes resources to gain efficiency of scale and permit scientists to scale up to solve larger science problems while still allowing system software to be configured as needed for individual application requirements. To test cloud computing for scientific capability, DOE’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) will install similar mid-range computing hardware, but will offer different computing environments. DOE will fund the project at $32 million over a three-year period, with the money divided about equally between Argonne National Laboratory and Berkeley Lab.

The combined set of systems will create a cloud testbed that scientists can use for their computations while also testing the effectiveness of cloud computing for their particular research problems. Since the project is exploratory, it’s been named Magellan in honor of the Portuguese explorer who led the first effort to sail around the globe. For more information, click here.

Computational Methods for Energy-Related Research
ARRA funding: $4.0 million

Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division (CRD) has received $4.0 million for six projects that will help develop computational methods to answer some of the nation's most pressing questions regarding energy efficiency, climate stabilization, and next-generation, carbon-neutral energy sources. All of the projects involve collaborations with one or more of DOE's Energy Frontier Research Centers. The awards were made by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research in the DOE Office of Science under the SciDAC-e program (Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing–Energy).

Three of the six projects address research in carbon capture and sequestration, three address solar energy, and one also addresses combustion efficiency. They are:

For more information, click here.

Computational Science and Engineering Petascale Initiative
Total Project Cost: $3.1 million
ARRA funding: $3.1 million

As chip manufacturers are turning more towards multi-core architectures, which pack increasing numbers of cores onto the chip, programmers must rethink the basic models of algorithm development and parallel programming. The new architectures have distinct differences in memory capacity and hierarchies that are causing researchers to consider new programming models and languages as a means to effectively exploit the power afforded by millions of cores.

DOE’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is receiving $3.125 million to develop the Computational Science and Engineering Petascale Initiative. As part of this program, NERSC will hire eight post-doctoral researchers to help design and modify modeling codes in key research areas such as energy technologies, fusion and biosciences to run on emerging many-core systems. For more information, click here.

health

Accelerating Cancer Research with Single Cell Arrays
Total Project Cost: $118,002
ARRA funding: $118,002

Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division is receiving $118,002 for research into developing a novel, highly sensitive assay termed Single Cell Arrays. Presently, no technology exists to screen small samples of archival, non-proliferating cells for chromosonal abnormalities. SCAs will provide the technology platform onto which one can develop a multitude of tests that can be applied widely to samples of interest to the cancer research community and tailored to specific diseases.

Due to its versatility, SCAs may become powerful tools in basic and clinical research, thereby benefiting patients with de novo translocations or premalignant lesions as well as cancer patients. Furthermore, SCAs promise to allow the cytogenetic analysis of minute samples sizes, down to single cells, regardless of their viability or cell cycle stage. This will open new avenues for the analysis of small samples, like those obtained by fine needle biopsies, as well as the analysis of disseminated or exfoliated tumor cells.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Beamline Automation for Molecular Structure Determination
Total Project Cost: $2.2 million
ARRA funding: $433,476

Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division is receiving $433,476 to build a next-generation robotic system for the study of biological molecules and their assemblies. A first generation version of the robotic crystal automounter, for use with synchrotron-based biological crystallography, has enabled collection of more accurate and extensive data on biological molecules, which can be a critical step in finding treatments for cancer and other diseases. This funding will allow for construction of a production version of the new robotic system that will be initially implemented at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.

This Recovery Act-funded grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health; it is an administrative supplement to about $1.7 million already awarded by NIGMS to this project. The project is a collaboration between the Physical Biosciences Division and the Engineering Division of Berkeley Lab.

Berkeley Cancer Genome Center
Total Project Cost: $278,332
ARRA funding: $278,332

Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division is receiving $278,332 to systematically analyze the genome and transcriptome of human cancers through the Berkeley Cancer Genome Center, as provided under The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) pilot project of the National Institutes of Health. TCGA is a preliminary effort to systematically understand the genetic changes that occur in and cause cancers.

The Berkeley Cancer Genome Center will measure mRNA expression profiles with the goal to help identify genes that are likely to show mutations in cancers, termed somatic mutations. The expression profiles will also be used to identify distinct subtypes of each cancer type that can be used to better assess disease outcome and response to therapy.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. The Berkeley Cancer Genome Center is a collaboration between Berkeley Lab, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at San Francisco.

Biomimetic Actinide Decorporation to Protect Against Radionuclide Exposure
Total Project Cost: $4.2 million
ARRA funding: $2.1 million

Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division is receiving $4.2 million over two years (funded for the first year at $2.1 million) to develop radionuclide decorporation agents to protect the general population from the consequences of a large-scale exposure to radionuclides. In the last several years, a sense of urgency and a renewed interest in the study of radionuclide chemistry and biology have emerged, as threats of nuclear terrorism have become more plausible, and the risk of environmental contamination and human exposure to radioisotopes consequently increased. The only practical therapy to reduce the dramatic health consequences of internal actinide/lanthanide contamination is treatment with chelating agents that form excretable complexes, although fission product lanthanides and the actinides are among the most intractable radionuclides to decorporate.

The objective of this two-year project is to sustain a large-scale interdisciplinary research program that will carry forward the pre-clinical development of both selected therapeutic actinide/lanthanide decorporation agents for emergency use and to enable the establishment of a viable infrastructure dedicated to the study and understanding of actinide and lanthanide chelation in biological systems. Research will be performed in collaboration with scientists from SRI International and the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (LRRI).

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health.

Developmental Changes in RNA Splicing
Total Project Cost: $1.4 million
ARRA funding: $710,579

Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division is receiving $1.4 million over two years (funded for the first year at $710,579) for research into basic mechanisms that control gene expression during production of red blood cells in the bone marrow. In particular, these studies focus on understanding a molecular switch in RNA splicing that occurs in red cell precursors. This splicing switch insures synthesis of protein isoforms that provide strength and flexibility required for red cell integrity in the circulation, without which the cells may fall apart, leading to hemolytic anemia. Understanding RNA splicing is important more generally because proper splicing is essential for normal development; conversely, aberrant splicing is a common cause of genetic disease and a factor in many human cancers.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Genome-wide Mapping of Chromosomal Proteins in Fruit Flies
Total Project Cost: $7.9 million
ARRA funding: $783,397

Berkeley Lab's Life Sciences Division is receiving $783,397 to complete a project to map chromosomal proteins and histone modifications across the genome of the Drosophila melanogaster, or the common fruit fly. The proteins and modifications under study are involved in basic chromosomal functions such as DNA replication, gene expression, gene silencing, and inheritance.

Successful completion of this project will provide basic information about the distributions of chromatin components across the Drosophila genome sequence, which will serve as a foundation for future functional studies. In addition, the data and analysis are highly likely to provide information critical to understanding the roles of chromatin in human cells and diseases. Chromatin organization is critical for utilizing information stored in the genome; failure to accurately target or maintain chromosomal proteins and chromatin components results in aberrant patterns of gene expression and chromosome behavior, and is associated with many human diseases, most notably cancer.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health to supplement a previous grant. For more on the project, click here.

Genomics of Coronary Artery Disease
Total Project Cost: $842,908
ARRA funding: $421,454

One of the pioneering contributions made by researchers in Berkeley Lab's Genomics Division is the demonstration that areas of the human genome that do not encode the functional units or genes, the so-called noncoding regions (previously referred to as "junk"), can actually exert a powerful regulatory influence on the expression of genetic traits, such as susceptibility to disease. 

One of the major causes of mortality in the U.S. and the developed world is cardiovascular or coronary artery disease (CAD). Researchers in the Genomics Division have identified a strong link between a noncoding region of the human genome and susceptibility to CAD. The Division has been awarded a two-year $842,908 Recovery Act grant by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to develop a model to uncover the mechanism by which a certain noncoding region confers susceptibility to CAD.

Huntington's Disease research
Total Project Cost: $1.3 million
ARRA funding: $611,104

Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division is receiving $1.3 million over two years (funded for the first year at $611,104) for research into mechanisms that prevent or delay onset and progression of Huntington’s disease (HD). HD is a neurodegenerative disease that is expected to affect 200,000 Americans in the next decade, yet no effective long-term approaches to therapy are currently available. This project will build on and explore recent discoveries that DNA oxidative damage causes the somatic expansion in HD that is observed with age and governs onset that begins around mid-life, and that loss of expansion is accompanied by an unforeseen amelioration or delay of pathophysiology.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health.

In Vivo Human Genome Transcriptional Enhancer Dataset
Total Project Cost: $352,224
ARRA funding: $352,224

Berkeley Lab's Genomics Division is receiving $352,224 to classify the gene regulatory properties of noncoding DNA in the human genome through: (1) the characterization of 1,500 extremely conserved human DNA fragments for spatial enhancer activity in vivo and (2) the development of a publicly available in vivo enhancer database to display these results. Such a community resource is expected to significantly fill the void in gene regulatory annotation of the human genome and to decipher their mutation as a cause of human disease.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Manipulating B1 Integrin to Enhance Radiation Therapy for Breast Cancer
Total Project Cost: $494,183
ARRA funding: $494,183

Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division has found that beta1 integrin inhibition enhances the therapeutic efficacy of ionizing radiation (IR); these promising findings have the potential to impact clinical radiation therapy for patients. It is hypothesized that beta1 integrin mediates a pro-survival signal after IR that can be targeted to enhance the effects of radiation therapy in breast cancer.

Berkeley Lab has received $494,183 to investigate if IR-induced beta1 integrin signaling mediates a survival signal using three-dimensional culture models of invasive and noninvasive breast cancer and expand upon and validate the observed efficacy of beta1 integrin inhibition and IR in the context of the tumor microenvironment in vivo.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Mitochondrial Function in Neurodegenerative Diseases
Total Project Cost: $1 million
ARRA funding: $500,000

Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division is receiving $1 million over two years (funded for the first year at $500,000) to develop tools to better understand the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases. Mitochondrial (MT) dysfunction is thought to be a primary contributor to Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease. These three diseases share the property that mitochondria are not keeping up with the energy demands of the cell.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a completely new, ultra-high sensitivity mass spectrometry technique called Nanostructure-Initiator Mass Spectrometry (NIMS), which is capable of mass analysis at 150 nanometer resolution. Thus, NIMS has the unprecedented ability to spatially track mass composition in a single cell or in a single mitochondrion. This grant is to develop and apply NIMS-based imaging technologies to define MT-specific, microenvironmental, and cell-specific processes in neurodegenerative disease.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health.

Novel Functions of Red Cell Proteins
Total Project Cost: $861,034
ARRA funding: $430,517

Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division is receiving $861,034 over two years (funded for the first year at $430,517) to investigate how red blood cell production is increased in response to multiple inherited and acquired anemias, including thalassemia, sickle cell disease, hereditary membrane disorders, autoimmune red blood cell destruction, and blood loss. The research is also relevant to diseases associated with bone marrow fibrosis and abnormal red blood cell production, including radiation-induced bone marrow injury. The long-term objectives are to develop a mechanistic understanding of how cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix adhesive interactions regulate erythropoiesis, or the production of red blood cells in bone marrow.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

PHENIX: New Methods for Automation in Macromolecular Crystallography
Total Project Cost: $8 million
ARRA funding: $366,123

Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division is receiving receiving $366,123 to accelerate the development of the PHENIX software program, which automates crystallography data analysis, and the process of understanding the three-dimensional structure of proteins and nucleic acids. After nine years of development, PHENIX (Python-based Hierarchical Environment for Integrated Xtallography) can rapidly arrive at an initial partial model of a structure without significant human intervention, given moderate resolution and good quality data. This grant will help develop new algorithms that will enable researchers to determine the structures of challenging, high-value biological macromolecules which are important for understanding biology and ultimately improving human health.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health to supplement previous grants. For more on PHENIX, click here.

SATB1: A Genome Organizer for Metastatic Breast Cancer
Total Project Cost: $325,975
ARRA funding: $325,975

Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division is receiving $325,975 to investigate the roles of the SATB1 protein in the progression of different types of cancer and proteins functionally related to SATB1 in self-renewal and differentiation of embryonic stem cells. The Berkeley Lab researchers discovered that SATB1 is a key determinant in the acquisition and maintenance of the metastatic phenotype of breast cancer, and that SATB1 may be used as a new diagnostic and prognostic marker and therapeutic target for aggressive breast cancers. SATB1 is an especially powerful target for breast cancer because the protein is a "genome organizer" which orchestrates the expression of hundreds of genes by regulating higher-order chromatin structure and epigenetic status of target gene loci.

This grant was awarded to Berkeley Lab by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health as an administrative supplement to the R37 grant for Non B DNA Structure with Chemical Carcinogens.

energy

Advanced Biofuels User Facility
Total Project Cost: $17.7 million
ARRA funding: $17.7 million

Berkeley Lab has been awarded $17.7 million to build an advanced biofuels process development facility that will help expedite the commercialization of next generation biofuels by providing industry-scale testbeds for innovative technologies. The facility is scheduled to be fully operational by early 2011 and will be operated through Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division. It will be the only one of its kind available for public use.

The biofuels development facility will provide universities, national laboratories, and industry partners the opportunity to scale up promising processes discovered in their laboratories. Planned capabilities include unique pretreatment of biomass, enzyme production, fermentation for the production of multiple biofuels, and product purification in quantities sufficient for engine testing at partner institutions.

This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy as part of its Biomass Program, which seeks to accelerate the commercialization of advanced biofuels. For more information, click here.

Advanced Energy-Efficient Building Technologies
ARRA Funding: $1.2 million

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division is receiving nearly $1.2 million to participate in four projects in energy-efficient building technologies. The projects are part of more than $75 million in Recovery Act funding for advanced energy-efficient building technologies announced by the DOE in June 2010. Buildings account for approximately 40 percent of U.S. primary energy consumption, as well as 39 percent of carbon dioxide, 18 percent of nitrogen oxides, and 55 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions.

Although national labs were not eligible to be prime recipients of this Recovery Act funding, the four Berkeley Lab projects were all awarded as subcontracts to other projects:

Advanced Lithium-ion Battery Manufacturing
Total Project Cost: $4.4 million
ARRA funding: $675,000

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Divisions is partnering with Applied Materials, Inc. to develop ultra-high energy, low-cost lithium-ion batteries using a novel manufacturing process. This new approach focuses on developing a high-energy density porosity-graded cathode on 3D current collectors, an integrated separator, and a suite of modular manufacturing processes that have the potential to transform lithium-ion battery manufacturing technology.

Applied Materials was awarded $4.4 million in Recovery Act funds through the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). As a subcontractor to Applied Materials, Berkeley Lab will received $675,000 over 2.5 years to provide component testing.

Buildings Technologies Programs
Total Project Cost: $7.8 million
ARRA funding: $7.8 million

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division is receiving $7.8 million for three activities related to buildings technologies:

This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to support its Net-Zero Energy Commercial Building Initiative, which seeks to achieve marketable net-zero energy commercial buildings by 2025.

Carbon Capture and Storage Simulation Initiative
ARRA funding: $4 million

Berkeley Lab has been awarded $4 million as part of the Department of Energy’s $40 million investment in the Carbon Capture and Storage Simulation Initiative. Using advanced modeling and simulation, the Initiative will develop validated, predictive simulation tools to accelerate the development and deployment of industrial carbon capture and storage technology. The initiative builds upon the efforts of DOE’s National Risk Assessment Partnership, a collaboration of several national labs to develop a science-based methodology for quantifying the potential risks at a CO2 storage site. The Computational Research and Materials Sciences Divisions will lead Berkeley Lab’s role in the partnership. The Earth Sciences Division will also make significant research contributions.

Carbon Sequestration in the Newark Basin
ARRA funding: $130,000

Tri-Carb Consortium for Carbon Sequestration—comprising Sandia technologies, LLC, Conrad Geoscience, and Schlumberger Carbon Services—will characterize the Newark Basin in southern New York and northern New Jersey, which is a promising area for large-scale geologic CO2 sequestration. Numerous industrial sources of CO2 are located in the area, so the characterization of a large nearby geologic sink will accelerate the development and implementation of carbon capture and geologic storage. Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division was awarded $130,000 to collaborate with the Tri-Carb Consortium and the research team by serving on the Project Advisory Committee and undertaking aspects of the geologic storage assessment. Berkeley Lab geochemists will conduct numerical model simulations of the interactions of CO2 with reservoir rock and brine to estimate these chemical interactions associated with the transport and fate of CO2 in the deep subsurface. This work will contribute to a preliminary assessment of the suitability of this geologic region for CO2 storage.

Energy Efficiency for Department of Defense
Total Project Cost: $663,000
ARRA funding: $445,000

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division is receiving $663,000 from the Department of Defense, of which $445,000 is through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to test a whole-building monitoring system at two DOD sites in partnership with the Navy and the Air Force. Berkeley Lab researchers, working with United Technologies Research Center, will develop a system that will continuously acquire performance measurements of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), lighting and water usage, and compare these measurements in real time to a reference simulation model that represents the design intent for each building.

The comparison will allow building operators to identify and quantify sub-optimal performance.  With this information, they can compare alternative corrective actions using whole building metrics and have a means to validate improved performance once corrective actions have been taken. The two facilities scheduled for the demonstration are a building at the Naval Facilities Engineering Center in Port Hueneme, California, and a facility at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. For more information, click here.

Energy Frontier Research Center Support
Total Project Cost: $172,362
ARRA funding: $172,362

Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry is receiving $172,362 to collaborate on a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center project at Cornell University. The aim of the project is to better develop new electrodes, based on complex oxide nanostructures, for fuel cells, batteries, solar photovoltaics, and catalysts. This research seeks to develop new oxide-based materials for cheap, efficient, and environmentally benign energy generation, conversion, and storage technologies.

The White House announced in April 2009 that the DOE Office of Science would invest $777 million over five years to establish 46 new Energy Frontier Research Centers across the country, including one at Berkeley Lab.

Enhanced Geothermal Systems
Total Project Cost: $7.0 million
ARRA funding: $2.1 million

Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division has been awarded $7 million over three years for research projects that seek to advance Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), which is capable of harnessing the Earth’s heat where conventional geothermal technologies cannot. Whereas conventional geothermal is limited to locations with particular geological characteristics, EGS can enhance or engineer a fracture network to allow for heat mining. The four EGS projects will seek to improve the ability to image fluids deep underground, estimate changes in the fracture surface area, build better models of fluid flow and investigate using carbon dioxide as a heat transmission fluid instead of water. For more information click here.

Flow Battery for Grid-Scale Energy Storage
ARRA funding: $1.6 million

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division has been awarded $1.6 million to develop a hydrogen-bromine flow battery for grid-scale energy storage. Grid-scale storage would allow grid operators to use more renewable energy, such as wind and solar, which are known as “variable loads” because they are inconstant.

The project is supported by a team of industrial partners which will help develop other components of the battery, including Dupont, Bosch and 3M. This funding comes to Berkeley Lab through the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), whose mission is to invest in projects that will develop transformational energy technologies. For more information, click here.

High Energy Lithium-Sulfur Battery
Total Project Cost: $5 million
ARRA funding: $300,000

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division is partnering with Sion Power Corporation to develop ultra-high energy lithium-sulfur batteries for electric vehicles. The project’s goal is to increase the battery’s lifetime, allowing it to be recharged as many as 500 times, or more. Sion was awarded $5 million in Recovery Act funds through the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). As a subcontractor to Sion, Berkeley Lab will receive $300,000 over three years to provide modeling and testing of the batteries.

Integrated Microbial-ElectroCatalytic System for Liquid Biofuel Production
ARRA funding: $3.9 million

Berkeley Lab has been awarded $3.9 million to genetically engineer new strains of a common soil bacterium, Ralstonia eutropha, now used in the production of bioplastics, so that it can be used in the production of advanced biofuels, including diesel and jet fuel. The project, led by the Earth Sciences Division and housed at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, will combine the microbial system with a new electrochemical catalytic system that generates hydrogen from water. Ralstonia eutropha has the natural ability to take hydrogen and carbon dioxide to make bioplastics and fatty acids; this project will use synthetic biology tools to re-route the microbe’s existing metabolic pathways for biofuel production.

This funding comes to Berkeley Lab through the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), whose mission is to invest in projects that will develop transformational energy technologies.

Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) Infrastructure
Total Project Cost: $4.0 million
ARRA funding: $4.0 million

The Joint BioEnergy Institute, one of three DOE Bioenergy Research Centers and located in Emeryville, California, is receiving $4 million to purchase equipment to enhance two areas of research: the study of conversion of plant biomass to biofuels and the study of sorghum as a bioenergy feedstock crop. Deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass remains the most difficult and costly step in the conversion of biomass to transportation fuels. To address the most significant opportunities for understanding the physicochemical mechanisms involved in biomass deconstruction, JBEI will acquire several pieces of advanced imaging equipment. To advance its research on the cell wall structure of rice, switchgrass, Arabidopsis, and tobacco, which is used as an expression system, JBEI will add greenhouses and chambers for study of these four species.

JBEI is a scientific partnership led by Berkeley Lab and including the Sandia National Laboratories, the University of California (UC) campuses of Berkeley and Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). This funding comes from the DOE Office of Science.

Joint Genome Institute (JGI) Infrastructure/Equipment
Total Project Cost: $13.1 million
ARRA funding: $13.1 million

The DOE’s Joint Genome Institute, located in Walnut Creek, California, is receiving $13.1 million for various IT infrastructure and equipment purchases. About $11 million will go towards IT, including upgrades of computing, storage, and networking capabilities, $1.1 million towards sequencing reagents to help accelerate the sequencing of three plant genomes, and $1 million to buy the latest next-generation sequencing technology. The upgrades will accelerate the ability of scientists to identify plant traits that facilitate conversion to carbon-neutral biofuels.

The JGI, funded by the DOE Office of Science, is the only federally funded, large-scale center targeting the sequencing and analysis of plant and microbial genomes relevant to the DOE missions of bioenergy, carbon cycling, and biogeochemistry.

Low Energy Integrated Building Systems National User Facility
Total Project Cost: $15.9 million
ARRA funding: $15.9 million

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) is receiving $15.9 million to build and operate a new National User Facility for low-energy buildings. The facility will contain a set of testbeds for building systems integration designed to address key technical challenges for low-energy buildings. It will be managed by EETD researchers and host visiting researchers from industry, academia, and other national labs. Buildings account for more than 40 percent of carbon emissions in the United States.

The Low Energy Integrated Building Systems User Facility will consist of a series of unique energy-efficient building systems testbeds to be located in new and existing buildings at Berkeley Lab. Researchers will be able to change out prototype building systems such as windows, lights, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), energy control systems, roofs, and skylights. The basic idea is to conduct initial measurements of energy use and environmental conditions to understand how the systems perform, and then to redesign and optimize their capabilities and performance. For more information, click here.

Metal Organic Framework Materials for Carbon Capture
ARRA funding: $3.7 million

Berkeley Lab has been awarded $3.7 million to find new materials that can absorb carbon dioxide and remove it from power plant flue gases, thus preventing it from escaping into the atmosphere. The scientists, from the Materials Sciences, Computational Research, and Environmental Energy Technologies Divisions, will be targeting a class of materials called Metal Organic Framework compounds, which were developed only in the last decade and hold great promise for capturing carbon dioxide because of their tunable surface chemistry and record high internal surface areas. They will use automated, high-throughput materials synthesis and screening technology to rapidly investigate this new class of compounds.

Berkeley Lab will work with two partner organizations on this project: Wildcat Discovery Technologies of San Diego, California, which will help build a new type of instrumentation to screen hundreds of compounds in parallel, and the Electric Power Research Institute, which will provide analysis to determine how best to use the material in a power plant once it is discovered.

This funding comes to Berkeley Lab through the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), whose mission is to invest in projects that will develop transformational energy technologies.

NDCX-II (Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment facility)
Total Project Cost: $11.0 million
ARRA funding: $11.0 million

Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator and Fusion Research Division will receive $11 million to construct a new induction linear accelerator (linac) as a facility for conducting research into the physics of high energy density laboratory plasmas. This facility, called NDCX-II, will be capable of producing intense, short-pulse ion beams for heating matter uniformly. NDCX-II is part of the roadmap of experiments for heavy ion fusion research and will pave the way towards making inertial fusion energy an affordable and environmentally attractive means of producing commercial electricity. LBNL is the leading partner in the U.S. Heavy Ion Fusion Science Virtual National Laboratory (HIFS-VNL), which also includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. NDCX-II is being developed in collaboration with the other VNL laboratories. For more about heavy ion fusion science, click here. For more about NCDX-II, click here.

The construction project is scheduled to start in July 2009 and end in March 2012. This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the DOE Office of Science.

Northern California CO2 Reduction Project
ARRA funding: $200,000

Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division is received $200,000 for the Northern California CO2 Reduction Project. The goal of this project is to demonstrate commercial-scale CO2 storage in deep underground geologic formations. If funded for Phase II, C6 Resources, an affiliate of Shell Oil Company, will capture, transport by pipeline, and start injecting 1 million tons of CO2 per year by 2016. Working in collaboration with C6, Berkeley Lab will develop and implement methods for predicting and monitoring movement and long-term fate of the CO2 distribution, assess the risks of CO2 leakage from the storage reservoir, and assess the regional-scale geologic setting and impacts of the project. For Phase I, Berkeley Lab and C6 are developing a detailed proposal for Phase II of this project.

Production of Advanced Coatings for Solar Cells
Total Project Cost: $24,969
ARRA funding: $24,969

Berkeley Lab’s Solar Energy Materials Research Group is receiving $24,969 to conduct testing on solar cell coupon samples prepared by Acree Technologies. Acree Technologies is developing new transparent, conducting oxide materials for solar cell applications. These results from Berkeley Lab will be used by Acree to optimize thin film deposition process for improved solar cell performance. This Recovery Act funding comes to Berkeley Lab as a subaward from Acree Technologies based in Concord, California.

Residential Energy Retrofits
ARRA funding: $7.15 million

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division is receiving $7.15 million for four projects to support residential energy retrofits. The funding comes from DOE’s Building Technologies Program, which has the goal of retrofitting five to 10 million homes by 2012. Energy retrofits are considered to be among the most cost effective ways for the nation to reduce its energy use and carbon emissions.

The four projects are:

Smart Grid Technology
Total Project Cost: $875,000
ARRA funding: $875,000

Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division is receiving $875,000 for mathematical analysis related to the development of Smart Grid technology. The current U.S. power grid is increasingly vulnerable as the system grows more complex. Present practices and policies limit its ability to respond to more than one failure at a time, whereas the 2003 blackout was sparked by three simultaneous failures. In this project, mathematicians and power engineers will build on previous work to develop optimization algorithms that can detect vulnerabilities, analyze cascading outages and perform resource allocation across multiple locations and times. For more information, click here.

Support for Recovery Act Program
Total Project Cost: $321,000
ARRA funding: $321,000

The Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Lab will provide technical assistance related to the DOE's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program (EECBG), which provides $2.7 billion in block grants to U.S. states, territories, local governments, and Indian tribes to develop and implement projects to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy use and fossil fuel emissions in their communities. (Click here for more information on EECBG.) This funding comes to Berkeley Lab from the Office of Weatherization and Intergovernmental Programs in DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Technical Assistance to the Federal Energy Management Program
Total Project Cost: $1.6 million
ARRA funding: $1.6 million

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division is receiving $1.6 million to provide technical assistance to eight projects under the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP). Berkeley Lab experts will provide training and assessment tools to help five federal agencies and all of the Armed Services to reduce their energy use and meet renewable energy goals. The projects emphasize EETD’s unique expertise in efficient lighting technologies, renewable power, advanced control systems that facilitate “smart” buildings, energy efficient practices in high-technology buildings (laboratories and data centers), and achieving energy efficiency by leveraging private sector capital through Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs).

In one project, EETD experts will assist the National Institutes of Health with advanced applications of LED lighting, including studying optimization of health and productivity with spectral and temporal programming of solid-state LED light sources. In another, the Army’s Fort Detrick will receive from Berkeley Lab an assessment of the viability of supplying all or part of the electric load in selected areas with photovoltaic solar panels. For more information, click here.

Technical Assistance to the Smart Grid investment Grant Program
ARRA funding: $800,000

Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) is receiving $800,000 to provide technical assistance to awardees of the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program. The DOE has invested $3.375 billion in this program, which provides grants ranging from $500,000 to $20 million for smart grid technology deployments, grants of $100,000 to $5 million for the deployment of grid monitoring devices, and matching grants of up to 50 percent for investments planned by electric utilities and other entities to deploy smart grid technologies.

EETD researchers will establish and manage a group of experts that will provide input on and help develop methodologically rigorous experimental designs for conducting consumer behavior studies of Advanced Metering Infrastructure-enabled dynamic pricing projects.

science

Advanced Light Source Accelerator Improvement and Equipment
Total Project Cost: $11.3 million
ARRA funding: $11.3 million

Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) is receiving $11.3 million to help it maintain its position as one of the world’s premier soft x-ray light sources. The ALS is a national user facility serving more than 1,900 scientists annually doing research in a wide variety of fields, from biology and earth science to the study of optics and semiconductors; they use the light sources to examine structures on the atomic and molecular level.

First, the ALS will receive $5.8 million to acquire sextupole magnets to increase brightness by a factor of two to three, keeping the ALS at the cutting edge of soft x-ray science. Second, ALS will receive $2 million to construct and install an elliptically polarizing undulator to provide a new x-ray source for the femtosecond soft x-ray beamline 6.0.2, effectively doubling the capacity of this facility by enabling soft and hard x-ray branchlines to operate simultaneously. This will allow new research on complex materials, such as superconductors, nanostructures, and transition-metal oxides.

Third, ALS will receive $2 million to equip its beamlines with advanced CCD-based detectors developed at the ALS to enhance the reach and productivity of the beamlines. Lastly, ALS will receive $1.5 million to develop a unique superconducting magnet for a beamline, allowing experiments leading to novel insights into the magnetic structure of engineered magnetic nanostructures and materials not accessible by any other technique. For more information, click here.

Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA)
Total Project Cost: $28.4 million
ARRA funding: $17.0 million

When completed in about four years, the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator, or BELLA, will be one of the most powerful lasers in the world, capable of accelerating electron beams to energies exceeding 10 GeV, or 10 billion electron volts, in a distance of just 1 meter. It will be useful not only for physicists but also chemists and biologists who need to observe ultrashort phenomenon; it may also have applications in medicine and homeland security. BELLA is a $28.4-million project, of which $20.7 million will be funded by the DOE Office of Science under the Recovery Act. For more information, click here.

Early Career Research Program
ARRA funding: $7.5 million

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that 69 scientists from across the nation will receive up to $85 million in funding for five-year research grants as part of the Department of Energy’s new Early Career Research Program. The funding provides support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work. Four Berkeley Lab researchers received funding under this program: Christian Bauer of the Physics Division, Feng Yuan of Nuclear Science, and Delia Milliron of Materials Sciences were each awarded $2.5 million; Feng Wang, also of the Materials Sciences Division, received funds through UC Berkeley, where he has a joint appointment. For more information, click here.

Gamma-ray imaging for radiation treatment, nuclear physics, and nuclear security
ARRA Funding: $1.0 million

Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Science Division is receiving $1.026 million to develop a fast, 3-D gamma-ray imager able to see through intervening matter and detect atomic interactions, nuclear transitions, and illicit radioactive sources. Based on the principle of Compton scattering, the gamma-ray “camera” will use high-purity germanium detectors sandwiched with silicon detectors to locate the source of gamma-ray emissions, plus high-speed electronics and fast computer algorithms to quickly build images from the data.

Initially the imager’s primary purpose will be to improve the reliability and practicality of ion-beam cancer therapy, by showing exactly where the beams are depositing their energy during treatment—a quick response time not currently possible.

The project will last three years and support a new postdoctoral researcher and graduate student in addition to the purchase of electronic equipment. For more information, click here.

High Temperature Superconductor Magnet Technology
Total Project Cost: $201,000
ARRA funding: $201,000

Berkeley Lab’s Superconducting Magnet Program in the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division is receiving $201,000 for the first year as part of a two-year, $4-million  ARRA-funded program to develop extremely high field magnets for high energy physics (HEP). Berkeley Lab is a key contributor to the collaboration, which includes seven universities and national laboratories as well as industry.

HEP has been at the forefront of engineering superconductors into practical wires, which enabled large accelerators in the United States and Europe and in the process provided vital development for many other applications, foremost among them being Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).  But the Niobium-base materials, Niobium-Titanium and Niobium-Tin, upon which all this technology depends, cannot provide fields greater than 18 Tesla in dipole magnets and 20-22 T in solenoids. A switch is therefore required to a new material with a significantly larger magnetic field potential.

The most promising candidate material is the High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) Bi-2212, which can commercially be obtained in the form of round wires. This research program will develop the magnet technology for Bi-2212. This multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, multi-sector collaboration brings key players together in a program that can serve the vital needs of future HEP accelerators and broadly break out the capability of HTS materials to a very wide range of applications, including MRI, NMR, and many science applications, as well as those not yet dreamed of.

Large Dipole Facility
Total Project Cost: $6.5 million
ARRA funding: $2.0 million

Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator and Fusion Research Division will receive $2.0 million to build a large dipole facility for testing advanced cables and inserts in high transverse field. The facility will provide a critical R&D tool for developing conductors and accelerator magnets operating above 15T, an enabling technology for future colliders at the energy frontier. The key component of the proposed facility is the large aperture dipole.

Other applications for this technology include ECR sources for nuclear physics, magnetic and inertial fusion energy, undulators for synchrotron light sources, NMR/MRI, and compact medical therapy devices.

Berkeley Lab is the world leader in high field accelerator magnet development for high-energy physics. All the record field dipoles fabricated in the last 15 years were developed at Berkeley Lab.

Molecular Foundry Equipment
Total Project Cost: $5.9 million
ARRA funding: $5.9 million

Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry is receiving $5.9 million to purchase four pieces of equipment to advance research on the nanoscale, with applications in the fields of energy science, information technology and medicine. A transmission electron microscope and multi-mode surface analysis system will help researchers to better understand the structure and chemistry of nanoscale materials. A robotic biopolymer purification analysis system will enable rapid processing of synthetic nanostructures, allowing users to fully exploit the unique high-throughput capabilities of the Molecular Foundry.

A new computer cluster will meet the new and increasing computational scale of Molecular Foundry Theory Facility user projects, while simultaneously facilitating more than a doubling of the number of projects that the Foundry can accommodate in this area of nanoscience. The proposed machine would enable entirely new capabilities in nanoscale self-assembly and energy-related nanoscience, and provide a strong platform for development of highly parallel algorithms that build on existing strengths in computational nanoscience.

The Molecular Foundry is one of five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers, which together serve more than 1,200 scientific users annually. This funding comes from the DOE Office of Science.

Nuclear Data Program Initiative
Total Project Cost: $950,000
ARRA funding: $950,000

As part of an effort to revitalize the workforce of the DOE’s National Nuclear Data Center at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Nuclear Science Division of Berkeley Lab will receive $950,000 to support a staff scientist. This is a five-year project to evaluate nuclear structure and decay data for a variety of applications, from homeland security to nuclear medicine to basic research.

88-Inch Cyclotron Accelerator Improvement Project
Total Project Cost: $1.9 million
ARRA funding: $1.7 million

The 88-Inch Cyclotron of the Nuclear Science Division of Berkeley Lab is a versatile accelerator used by nuclear physicists and chemists to study the properties of the nucleus. Scientists and engineers from both industry and the government also use the facility to study the effects of cosmic rays on electronic components for satellites and spacecraft. The project will upgrade the cyclotron’s high-voltage injection system to provide more intense heavy-ion beams for the research programs. In addition, the radio frequency amplifier, which provides the accelerating voltage, will be modernized to improve the performance and reliability of the accelerator. The $1.88-million project is funded by the DOE Office of Science.