The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory are partnering with University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras (UPRRP) to expand UPRRP’s environmental sciences program and attract minority students underrepresented into the atmospheric and Earth system sciences and new energy workforce.
Dr. Yan Feng
The four-year project is one of the four awards selected by the Biological and Environmental Research program as part of DOE’s 2023 Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) Initiative, which aims to support historically underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering ,and mathematics and diversify American leadership in energy and climate. To that end, it supports internships, training programs, and mentorship opportunities at historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions.
“The two national laboratories bring significant expertise to this collaboration,” said Dr. Yan Feng, a principal atmospheric and climate scientist from Argonne’s Environmental Science division. “Argonne is bringing to the table our work on the aerosol and Earth system modeling. Brookhaven is bringing their strong experience in atmospheric aerosol and cloud measurements. We are excited to help prepare the undergraduate and graduate students at UPRRP, a minority-serving institution that is predominantly Hispanic, for careers where they can contribute to and address the science challenges of DOE programs.”
Argonne and Brookhaven researchers will visit UPRRP annually to teach workshops, help set up the observational site, aid faculty in designing two new courses – one on aerosol modeling and data science and one on atmospheric aerosol instruments.
“We plan to introduce the students and faculty to the DOE high performance computing capabilities at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, and to the Advanced Photon Source for imaging particles. We will also train students to operate the instruments and use the long-term atmospheric datasets available at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement user facility,” Feng said. “The UPRRP faculty and students are excited for the opportunity to have hands on experience at these world-class facilities.”
Applications for the second round of FY2023 funding for DOE RENEW is open until April and May 2023.
