Jefferson Lab photos/Aileen Devlin
The Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program enables preparation for next-generation science
NEWPORT NEWS – Ten projects aimed at advancing next-generation science and technology have been awarded funding by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility for fiscal year 2024. These projects are supported under the auspices of DOE’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program.
DOE’s LDRD Program enables the national labs to quickly respond to scientific and technological opportunities in support of DOE's overall R&D mission. The program also permits seeding and exploration of exciting new opportunities of interest both within the scientific community and in the public sphere. The projects are proposed independently, are evaluated through peer review, and are funded by the individual laboratories.
Many of the new projects selected for funding at Jefferson Lab for fiscal year 2024 include science and technologies related to the lab’s Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility. As an Office of Science (Office of Nuclear Physics) user facility, CEBAF supports the research of more than 1,800 nuclear physicists worldwide.
“This is a great collection of projects that is really focused across the board on where we want to go with the future of CEBAF,” said Jefferson Lab Director Stuart Henderson. “It includes aspects for where we want to go with nuclear and accelerator science; where we want to go with a CEBAF upgrade; and where we want to go with advanced computing and data science technologies.”
The projects chosen for funding this year include four that address future challenges in nuclear physics research. Three others pertain to accelerator science and R&D. The remaining three address challenges in the computational and data sciences. The projects include five newly awarded projects and five that received funding for a second year. Links to articles about several recently completed LDRD projects can be found in the further reading section below.
“A poster session showcased the success of FY23 LDRD projects, with four completed ones. One project, involving a principal investigator from the Computational Sciences and Technology division, emphasized cross-division collaboration for sophisticated methods of simulations. Additionally, three accelerator projects achieved notable milestones, optimizing CEBAF operation and technology for a CEBAF upgrade to 22 GeV. Among the FY23 achievements was the filing for a patent on the Polarized Bunched Electron Beam in a Low-Energy Spin-Transparent Storage Ring, intended for use in quantum computing,” said Latifa Elouadhriri, Jefferson Lab’s LDRD program manager.
The DOE LDRD Program has three objectives. It supports mission agility; it advances the frontiers of science, technology and engineering; and it supports workforce development efforts.
“LDRD enables researchers to develop new capability and explore proof-of-principle calculations or experiments that open new paths for our science and technology mission,” said David Dean, Jefferson Lab’s deputy director for science. “An example is the work ongoing to explore artificial intelligence and machine learning applications to accelerator performance. That LDRD led to funded programmatic effort. That is the type of success we are aiming for.”
Further Reading
LDRD at Jefferson Lab
DOE’s LDRD Highlights 2021
DOE’s LDRD Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
LDRD Project Article: Steering Electrons Out of the Drift with Deep Learning
LDRD Project Article: A Trial Run for Smart Streaming Readouts
LDRD Project Article: Accelerating the Future
Contact: Kandice Carter, Jefferson Lab Communications Office, kcarter@jlab.org