Four universities will split more than $40 million in grant funding under a National Nuclear Security Administration program designed to bolster fundamental science applicable to nuclear weapons, and encourage students to come to work in the nuclear security enterprise, the agency announced Monday.
The four universities funded under the recently announced round of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) Program bring the total number of SSAA-funded centers of excellence to eight, the agency wrote in a press release.
The four new awardees are:
- The George Washington University in Washington, which will get $12.5 million over 5 years to manage the Capital/DOE Alliance Center, which NNSA said researches high pressure science and technology under the leadership of Russell Hemley.
- Texas A&M University, a partner on the incoming Los Alamos National Laboratory management contractor, which will get $12.5 million over 5 years to manage the Center for Research Excellence on Dynamically Deformed Solids under Michael Demkowicz, NNSA said.
- University of California, longtime Los Alamos lead and another partner on the management contractor set to take over Nov. 1, which will get $10.5 million over 5 years for its San Diego campus to manage the Center for Matter under Extreme Conditions. The center, led by Farhat Beg, researches high-energy density physics and trains graduate students at participating SSAA campuses and NNSA National Laboratories. The work will involve both computer modeling and experiments, according to NNSA.
- University of Michigan, which will receive $5 million over 5 years to manage the Center for Laboratory Astrophysics, led by Carolyn C. Kuranz and Paul Drake. The astrophysics center’s students and faculty perform fundamental research in high-energy density physics, NNSA said.
Other SSAA-funded centers of excellence are located at: Cornell University; the University of Notre Dame; and Louisiana State University. Texas A&M also has a second center of excellence, apart from the one designated on Monday.
SSAA, funded through the Office of Defense Programs’ Science program, has a budget of just over $53 million for 2019: the same amount the Donald Trump administration requested for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, and about $500,000 more than what Congress appropriated in 2018.
