The Lab’s Office of National and Homeland Security (ONHS) acts as the interface between the Lab and the nation’s security agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and the intelligence community. ONHS recently launched external- and internal-facing websites to provide information and resources for both audiences.
The external website provides publicly available information about ONHS’ role and work at the Lab relevant to national security challenges, such as nuclear security, chemical and biological security, quantum sensing, quantum information science, and cybersecurity technologies.
The internal site, which is LDAP-protected, provides information and resources for Lab researchers, including funding opportunities and security sponsors’ priorities.
“With budget cuts in some DOE offices, many divisions are looking for opportunities to diversify their funding sources,” said John Valentine, Head of ONHS. “Security agencies offer many opportunities. In fact, over the last decade, the size of the ONHS portfolio at the Lab has doubled. In the last few years, 20 of 21 divisions at the Lab have had projects in the ONHS portfolio.”
Funding Opportunities Database and Reports
To help Lab researchers search for relevant funding opportunities, the internal website lists ongoing and annual funding opportunities as well as relevant one-off opportunities for the Lab. The one-off opportunities are sourced from sam.gov, an online directory of all federal funding opportunities. Information is updated daily by an AI scraping tool and is searchable by Berkeley Lab Area, security agency, technical area, and focus area. Researchers can also access an AI report that summarizes each opportunity; the report also lists researchers at the Lab whose work is potentially relevant to the opportunity (see sample AI report).
“These new tools are designed to close the gap in awareness from researchers about opportunities in the security sector,” said ONHS program manager Shawn Tornga, who developed the tool. “We hope that listing some of the researchers whose work may be relevant to the opportunity can promote cross-area and cross-division discussion and projects.”
In addition to searching on the website, researchers can subscribe to an automated ONHS report that will alert researchers by email about relevant opportunities.
Information about Security Agencies’ Mission Needs
The internal site also provides links to documents describing the mission needs of three security agencies: the NNSA, the Department of Defense (also known as Department of War), and the Department of Homeland Security. Information about the needs of the intelligence community is in the works.
“Lab researchers have the skills to perform the work for many security agency opportunities. We hope that getting them information about these opportunities and educating them about security agency needs will help them pursue more of them,” said Shawn.
Contact ONHS@lbl.gov for more information.
