Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) is a basic research program funded by the 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, and they aim to address priority research directions and opportunities identified by the scientific community in a series of BES workshop and roundtable reports. These centers 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.
Since its inception in 2009, there have been 107 centers across 43 states and the District of Columbia. Biennial funding opportunities for 4-year awards started in 2014. The 2024 funding opportunity marked the 7th class of these Energy Frontier Research Centers awards, with a targeted competition in advanced manufacturing, including polymers and co-design of materials and processes to revolutionize fabrication science for microelectronics and quantum information science, and environmental management of nuclear waste tanks. These 10 centers will join the 34 continuing EFRCs that focus on key fundamental energy science areas including advanced manufacturing, energy storage, environmental management, hydrogen, microelectronics, nuclear, quantum information science, separations, solar, and the subsurface to make 44 active Energy Frontier Research Centers. Each center has its own unique mission that supports the Department of Energy’s initiatives in advancing basic energy research across the United States.
