
John Hemminger, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Irvine, will step down as BESAC chair on March 31. He has held the position since 2003.
(Image credit – Photograph by Steve Zylius, courtesy of UC Irvine)
John Hemminger, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Irvine, will step down as BESAC chair on March 31. He has held the position since 2003.
(Image credit – Photograph by Steve Zylius, courtesy of UC Irvine)
On Feb. 23 and 24, the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) held its first meeting
This latest meeting of BESAC marked a moment of major transition for the committee. BESAC Chair John Hemminger, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Irvine, is set to step down on March 31, having led the committee since 2003. His successor will be physicist Persis Drell, the Stanford University provost and a former director of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
The meeting was also the first since the retirement
Meanwhile, DOE and its stakeholders are waiting to see what changes the new Trump administration will bring. The Office of Science is currently anticipating the nomination of a new director, a position subject to confirmation by the Senate. DOE’s new deputy director for science programs, Steve Binkley, is for the moment doubling as acting director of the office. At the BESAC meeting, Binkley said that DOE is in a “holding pattern” while it waits for Congress to confirm
Concerning the DOE budget, Binkley reported that, according to “snippets” of information he had received, Congress may well extend to a full year the continuing resolution presently
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Befitting the moment of transition facing BESAC, the meeting included presentations reflecting on two of the most important tools for informing BES’s scientific agenda: the BES-run Basic Research Needs (BRN) workshops and BESAC’s delineation of research grand challenges.
George Crabtree, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, recounted that the BRN workshop format extends back to 2002. He pointed to the particular influence of the large “Basic Research Needs to Assure a Secure Energy Future” workshop
Northwestern University chemistry professor Mark Ratner and Hemminger provided an overview of BES’s grand challenge framework established in the 2007 BESAC report
Ratner reported that the grand challenges report had played a key role in informing the development of DOE’s Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) program, as well planning for the construction of next-generation x-ray light sources. He also noted that DOE’s decision not to back dedicated crystal growth facilities was the one place where the report “failed miserably” to influence department planning. Hemminger reported that a 2015 review and update
While new BES initiatives are on hold pending the approval of a new DOE budget, the BES program is continuing to develop its priorities for future research. BES Director Harriet Kung reported that BES plans to hold a BRN workshop on next-generation electrical energy storage in March and another on catalysts in May, both updating BRN reports released in 2007. A third workshop on nuclear energy, not yet scheduled, will update a BRN report released in 2006. The BES program also plans to release reports from three recent BRN workshops dedicated, respectively, to synthesis science, instrumentation science, and science related to the “energy–water nexus.”
Matt Tirrell, a professor of molecular engineering at the University of Chicago and deputy laboratory director for science at Argonne, was on hand to preview the energy–water nexus report. He described it as focusing primarily on the development of technologies and processes relating to the management and consumption of water resources. He said that five provisional “themes” had emerged from the workshop, each suggesting a high-priority focus for research:
Other presentations at the meeting included an overview of x-ray light sources worldwide, an update on operations of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, and a preview of a forthcoming review report on DOE’s Laboratory Directed R&D program. Slide decks from all presentations at the meeting can be accessed here