News

Earth Sciences is here for the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI)

Six investigators in the Environmental Remediation Program of the Earth Sciences Division (ESD) of Berkeley Lab were recently successful in securing over $4.5 million in funding from DOE’s Environmental Remediation Sciences Program. Although announcements associated with the recent solicitation are still under way, the funds allocated to Berkeley Lab represent a significant portion of the research funding for this competition.

The successful proposals focus on the use of advanced geophysical, geochemical, microbiological, and hydrological approaches for understanding complex subsurface phenomena. Two categories of proposals were funded: one focused on project-based research, while the other focused on the development of DOE field research centers, where multidisciplinary research teams would perform hypothesis-driven field research to investigate processes influencing subsurface transport, immobilization, and remobilization of metals and radionuclides.

Successful project-based proposals include those of Jiamin Wan and her team, who will investigate the hydrological and geochemical processes for understanding uranium mobility in the Hanford Vadose Zone, and Mark Conrad, who will explore in situ methods to sequester uranium and strontium-90 through microbial precipitation of phosphate minerals. Terry Hazen will work with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists to explore meta-proteogenomics at the Hanford 100H Site.

Several ESD scientists participated in developing three successful field research center proposals in support of collaborative research at contaminated sites of interest to DOE. Don DePaolo will be working with a multi-institutional team at the 300 Site in Hanford, Washington; Ken Williams will be working with collaborators at the Rifle, Colorado, UMTRA site; and Susan Hubbard will be working with others at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory site in Tennessee. All of the projects involve investigation of physical, chemical, and biological processes that influence the form and mobility of DOE contaminants in the subsurface.

Berkeley Lab’s success in this competition indicates the expertise that the Environmental Remediation Program of ESD brings to DOE in using experimental, numerical, and theoretical approaches across a range of spatial scales—to provide a scientific basis for developing new remediation concepts or strategies for the long term stewardship of contaminated sites across the DOE complex.

Dr. Susan Hubbard,
Environmental Remediation Program Leader and Berkeley Lab researcher who will participate in a newly funded DOE project.

Dr. Jiamin Wan

Dr. Mark Conrad

Dr. Terry Hazen

Dr. Don DePaolo

Ken Williams