For a national laboratory the size, scope, and profile of Berkeley Lab to continue to lead the scientific enterprise requires strategic planning. This means having a long-term plan to invest in the remarkable people of Berkeley Lab, our most important strategic asset, and expanding our capabilities, infrastructure, tools, and methods.
To help guide the Lab in making the right kinds of investments and steps, the Laboratory’s leadership, with input from the Lab’s domain experts, have chosen to use a set of five broad research themes to describe how we seek to strengthen our science beyond the confines of specific programs.
The focus on specific research fields can ebb and flow from year to year in response to the nation’s rapidly changing needs and the evolving scientific landscape, so the chosen themes look beyond each research field’s boundaries. By design, the five themes also transcend individual research areas at the Lab and DOE program offices; in this way they represent not the current programmatic and funding structures but the most impactful directions for growth in the coming years and decades.
“We chose themes that we think will unlock the greatest scientific opportunities over the next decade, with the overarching goal of accelerating the delivery of science solutions for the nation,” said Mike Witherell, the Lab’s Director.
“These are themes that support multiple areas of research so that the tools, capabilities, and expertise that we build can benefit the greatest number of our researchers,” added Carol Burns, the Lab’s Deputy Director for Research and Chief Research Officer.
The discussion around research themes began more than a year ago, at an ALD retreat in the fall of 2022. This idea was developed during the Directors’ retreat in 2023, and further refined through a series of roundtable discussions with scientists from across the laboratory. The research themes were finalized at the ALD meeting on January 22.
The Five Research Themes
Following are the five strategic research themes and several objectives within each of the themes:
- Understanding the universe, from quarks and nuclei to the cosmos
- Developing theory, simulation and data science to advance the frontiers of knowledge
- Creating revolutionary accelerators, detectors, and instruments
- Integrating, delivering, and operating advanced facilities, tools, and experiments to explore the fundamental laws of physics
- Leveraging the interplay between theory and experiment to deepen our understanding of the universe
- Discovering materials, chemical processes, and biological systems for energy and the environment
- Delivering a fundamental and mechanistic understanding of biological and chemical processes and material phenomena across scales
- Creating, characterizing, and controlling abiotic, biotic, and hybrid systems
- Predicting the trajectory/evolution of complex environmental systems
- Harnessing and combining this knowledge to develop new functionality in systems engineering and manufacturing
- Driving the future of computing and data science
- Innovating new mathematical, statistical, and computational methods
- Realizing the benefits of novel approaches such as AI/ML in scientific disciplines
- Innovating methods to optimize and deliver application-ready data for the scientific community
- Creating models to explore the limits of emergent behavior of physical, chemical, and biological systems
- Co-designing novel computing and network architectures
- Accelerating the next quantum revolution
- Dramatically accelerating clean energy technologies
- Improving energy efficiency, energy conversion, and energy storage, and managing the reliable flow of energy
- Decarbonizing and improving access to sustainable buildings, transportation and industrial systems, and energy resources
- Increasing resource efficiency and circularity through a science-to-system approach
- Developing novel approaches to energy harvesting and transportation
- Enabling broad community access to reliable, resilient, and efficient energy
- Revolutionizing how we do science
- Enhancing revolutionary multi- and transdisciplinary research environments
- Building and managing specialized instrumentation and capabilities (including user facilities) in the service of science communities
- Incorporating human factors, policy, and economic analysis in evaluating technical solutions
- Accelerating discovery by integrating AI, automation, and data science
- Developing and cultivating the adoption of first-of-a-kind scientific tools
- Advancing partnerships and embodying a culture of inclusion
“The first four research themes relate to significant areas of opportunity for Berkeley Lab that build on the work and the strengths that we already have at the Lab,” said Carol. “The fifth is about mindfully shaping how science is done.” Research News has included examples of how the Lab is already revolutionizing how we do science, for example, by looking for multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to science, using new computational tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the development of first-of-a-kind scientific tools.
The research themes are included in the 2024 Lab Plan, which frames the types of projects Berkeley Lab is working on now and plans to work on in the future. They are also guiding the selection process for the FY25 Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program.
“Our research themes will help our community plan future science directions and invest in common needs and goals,” said Carol. “The research themes are not set in stone, so they may shift over time, but they give us a way to focus on strategic investments that will ensure our continued leadership in the future,” she added.
