Office of Science

The Office of Science includes six interdisciplinary science program offices: • Advanced Scientific Computing Research • Basic Energy Sciences • Biological and Environmental Research • Fusion Energy Sciences • High Energy Physics • Nuclear Physics. Supercomputer facilities supported by ASCR include the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The ASCR supports the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), which interconnects more than 40 DOE sites at speeds up to 100 gigabits per second. ESnet is a successor to a network that the Office of Science created in 1974 to connect geographically dispersed researchers through a single network. In the 1980s the Office of Science collaborated with DARPA, NSF and NASA to convert the agencies' separate networks into a single integrated communications network that became the basis for the commercial Internet. Biological and Environmental Research The Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) supports research and scientific user facilities in the biological and environmental sciences to support DOE's missions in energy, environment, and basic research. BER initiated the Human Genome Project in 1986 and has continued to support activity in genomics-based systems biology and initiatives related to biotechnology applications. Environmental efforts include research on the global carbon cycle and possible mitigation of the impacts of climate change. When it started in 1978, BER's Climate Change Research Program was the first U.S. research program to investigate the effects of greenhouse gases on climate and environment. The Office of Science climate change research program is now the third largest in the U.S. This organization supports U.S. participation in the ITER project through the U.S. ITER Project Office, a partnership of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. == Research funding ==

More than 90 percent of the Office of Science budget is allocated to research and scientific facilities. The fundamental research areas in which the Office of Science has programs include physics and other basic energy sciences, biological and environmental sciences, and computational science. Support is provided for research activities in the national laboratories and universities. The office is the principal (or the single largest) source of U.S. federal government support for research in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, fusion energy, materials science, and chemical sciences. The Office of Science is estimated to provide 40 percent of the funding for basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. It is also a major source of funding for government-supported research in climate change, geophysics, genomics, life sciences, and science education. The increase in the Fusion budget reinstated the U.S. contribution to ITER, which was reduced significantly in the previous year. == History ==

DOE's Office of Energy Research was a predecessor to the Office of Science. In 2006, the Office of Science was placed under the oversight of the Under Secretary of Energy for Science, a new position created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Accomplishments and awards DOE lists 76 Nobel Prize winners as having been associated with Office of Science programs or facilities under DOE and its predecessor agencies. == Organization ==

The Office of Science is led by a Presidentially-nominated, Senate-confirmed Director and two senior career federal Deputy Directors. The Director role is currently vacant. The current deputy directors are Deputy Director for Science Programs Dr. Harriet Kung and Deputy Director for Field Operations Juston Fontaine. Both are a longtime Energy Department managers. == See also ==