New US energy research centres will create 1,100 new posts for postdocs, graduate ... (Nature)

Expanding energy frontiers
Virginia Gewin

New US energy research centres will create 1,100 new posts for postdocs, graduate students and technicians.

Dozens of new US Department of Energy (DOE) centres are expected to recruit some 1,100 postdocs, graduate students and technical staff. The DOE announced on 27 April that it is creating 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers, with the dual goals of training the next generation of researchers and fostering energy-related research.

Each centre will receive between US$2 million and $5 million per year in federal funds for the next 5 years. "We hope the new centres will lead to growth of energy-related fields and that subsequent technological advances will be the seed corn to generate future green jobs," says Harriet Kung, the DOE's associate director for basic energy sciences.

Sixteen centres will get their full 5 years of funding from $277 million allocated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the national economic stimulus package. The DOE has funded 30 other centres for their first year, and plans to fund the 4 subsequent years subject to budget constraints.

Of the 46 centres nationwide, 31 will be housed at universities, 12 at DOE national labs, two at nonprofit organizations and one at a private, commercial, research laboratory. The centres' specialities range from solar energy to catalysis to carbon storage.

The DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee (pictured), for instance, will host two centres to concentrate on materials science. Each will address areas that sorely need revolutionary breakthroughs, says Michelle Buchanan, the lab's associate director for physical sciences. For example, a major bottleneck in developing new batteries or fuel cells is an incomplete understanding of how fluids interact with solid surfaces.
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more: http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2009/090514/full/nj7244-285a.html