By Donna Hemmila

Fourteen UC-affiliated researchers have won newly created U.S. Department of Energy grants aiming to bolster the ranks of America's scientists.

The DOE awarded 69 recipients from across the nation 5-year early career research grants. They will share $85 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.

"This investment reflects the Obama Administration's strong commitment to creating jobs and new industries through scientific innovation," said Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who announced the winners. "Strong support of scientists in the early career years is crucial to renewing America's scientific work force and ensuring U.S. leadership in discovery and innovation for many years to come."

University-based researchers will receive at least $150,000 a year to cover summer salary and research expenses, according to the DOE announcement Thursday (Jan. 14). At national laboratories where the DOE typically covers full salary and expenses for employees, the grant recipients will receive at least $500,000 a year. To be eligible for a grant, the researcher must be an untenured, tenure-track assistant professor at an academic institution or a full-time employee of a national lab and have received a doctoral degree within the last 10 years.

The UC winners are:

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Read lab story.

• Christian Bauer: "GENEVA: An NLO event generator for the Large Hadron Collider," funded by the Office of High Energy Physics
• Delia Milliron: "Inorganic Nanocomposite Electrodes for Electrochemical Energy Storage and Energy Conservation," funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences
• Feng Wang, who holds a joint appointment with the UC Berkeley physics department: "Control Graphene Electronic Structure for Energy Technology," funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences
• Feng Yuan: "Theoretical Investigation of Nucleon Structure," funded by the Office of Nuclear Physics

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

• Grigory Bronevetsky: "Reliable High Performance Peta‐ and Exa‐Scale Computing," funded by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research
• Vsevolod Soukhanovskii: "Advanced High Heat Flux Divertor Program on the National Spherical Torus Experiment," funded by the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences

Los Alamos National Laboratory

• Andrew Gaunt: "Molecular Transuranic Discovery Science: Underpinning National Energy Security and Waste Remediation Needs," funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences
• Christopher Mauger: "Design of the near detectors and optimization of water and ice targets for fine‐grained tracking detectors for the Fermilab Long‐Baseline Neutrino Experiment," funded by the Office of High Energy Physics
• Nathan McDowell: "An Integrated Theory on the Mechanisms of Vegetation Survival and Mortality During Drought," funded by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research
• Evgenya Smirnova: "Advancing Our Understanding of Photonic Band Gap Structures for Accelerators," funded by the Office of High Energy Physics
• Tsuyoshi Tajima: "Technology Development Toward Very High‐Gradient and High Quality‐Factor Superconducting RF Cavities," funded by the Office of Nuclear Physics

UC Irvine

• Matthew Law: "Evaluating the Oxidative, Photothermal and Electrical Stability of Colloidal Nanocrystal Solids," funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences
• Eric Potma: "Ultrafast Electron Transport Across Nanogaps in Nanowire Circuits," funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences

UC Santa Barbara

• Benjamin Monreal: "New Experiments to Measure the Neutrino Mass Scale," funded by the Office of Nuclear Physics

Donna Hemmila is managing editor with the UC Office of the President Integrated Communications. For more information, visit the UC Newsroom or follow us on Twitter.