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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 2-Jul-2025 07:10 ET (2-Jul-2025 11:10 GMT/UTC)

UCF to lead $5M consortium to train nuclear engineers

University of Central Florida
Grant and Award Announcement

UCF has continuously been recognized as a top supplier of graduates to the aerospace and defense industries, and two UCF professors plan to solidify that reputation through a new national consortium.

Professors Subith Vasu and Jayanta Kapat are leading a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to establish a consortium that will support students from underrepresented communities who are interested in earning engineering degrees.

The PARtnership and Training for NNSA Engineering and Relevant Sciences (PARTNERS) consortium will include the University of California, Irvine and the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU). Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory will collaborate and support students and faculty.

The goal of PARTNERS is to provide a training ground and talent pipeline for the next generation of nuclear engineers.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Taking stock of the known and unknown microbial space

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Using publicly available genome sequence data generated over the past three decades, an analysis from researchers at the DOE Joint Genome Institute assesses what fraction of the microbial diversity we know about, and proposes a path forward to curate and cultivate what is still unknown.

Journal: Science Advances
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Research sparks prevention techniques for wildfires and outages

Texas A&M University

Made up of a four-man team that has been conducting research together for decades, Professor B. Don Russell and Principal Research Engineers Carl Benner, Jeffrey Wischkaemper and Karthick Manivannan are working on a nearly $3.2 million Department of Energy (DOE) project titled “Preventing Wildfire Ignition from Powerline Equipment Failures Using ML-Based Classification of Real-Time Electrical Measurements.” What started as a focus on failure diagnosis of mechanisms on power lines evolved into wildfire and power outage prevention caused by power lines.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

New measurements turn the Hubble tension into a crisis

Duke University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The Universe really seems to be expanding fast. Too fast, even. A new measurement confirms what previous — and highly debated — results had shown: The Universe is expanding faster than predicted by theoretical models, and faster than can be explained by our current understanding of physics. This discrepancy between model and data became known as the Hubble tension. Now, results published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters provide even stronger support to the faster rate of expansion.

Journal: The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Funder: John Templeton Foundation, DOE/US Department of Energy, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, U.S. National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

UT secures $20 million DOE grant to develop critical nuclear fusion materials

University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Grant and Award Announcement

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Tickle College of Engineering has been awarded a $20 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a groundbreaking project led by UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair for Nuclear Materials Steve Zinkle.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Four Case School of Engineering faculty receive highest honor from US government

Case Western Reserve University
Grant and Award Announcement

CLEVELAND—On Tuesday, Jan. 14, President Biden awarded nearly 400 scientists and engineers the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers. Four of the awardees are Case Western Reserve University engineering faculty: A. Bolu Ajiboye, Christine Duval, Burcu Gurkan and Steve Majerus.

Funder: National Institutes of Health, Department of Veterans' Affairs, DOE/US Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Defense

UT Arlington powers domestic magnet manufacturing innovation

University of Texas at Arlington
Grant and Award Announcement

The University of Texas at Arlington has been awarded a $1.3 million grant to develop a more efficient process for sourcing rare earth elements needed to produce high-performance magnets. Led by physicist J. Ping Liu, the project aims to make the mining of these critical materials more cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable by using cheaper, more abundant materials.

Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

Fresh, direct evidence for tiny drops of quark-gluon plasma

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new analysis of data from the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) reveals fresh evidence that collisions of even very small nuclei with large ones might create tiny specks of a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Scientists believe such a substance of free quarks and gluons, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, permeated the universe a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

Journal: Physical Review Letters
Funder: DOE/US Department of Energy

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