Testimony of Dr. J. Steven Binkley
Acting Director, Office of Science
U.S. Department of Energy
Before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
U.S. Senate
August 5, 2021
Introduction
Thank you, Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso, and distinguished Members of theCommittee. It is with great pleasure that I join you today to represent the Department of Energy(DOE) Office of Science at this hearing to discuss the current and future role of the Office of
Science as a foundational contributor to the basic science research ecosystem in the U.S., and as
an enabler for advances across many scientific and technical domains of critical importance toour economic and national security.
As this committee is well aware, the Office of Science’s core mission is to deliver the scientificdiscoveries and major scientific tools that will transform our understanding of nature andadvance the energy, economic, and national security goals of the United States. We are the
Nation’s largest Federal sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences and the lead Federal
agency supporting fundamental scientific research for our energy future. Over the decades, theinvestments and accomplishments in basic research and enabling research capabilities made by
the Office of Science and its predecessor agencies have provided the foundations for countless
new technologies, businesses large and small, and entirely new industries. These investments
have contributed immensely to our nation’s economy, to our national security, and to our qualityof life.
We continue this work today.
Each of the core science programs in the Office of Science – Advanced Scientific Computing
Research, Biological and Environmental Research, Basic Energy Sciences, Fusion Energy
Sciences, High Energy Physics, and Nuclear Physics – supports research that probes the mostfundamental disciplinary questions. The research we fund every year across hundreds of U.S.
institutions of higher education and at all 17 of DOE’s National Laboratories – 10 of which wehave a direct stewardship responsibility – constantly pushes the frontiers of science throughexploration of nature’s most compelling mysteries. This ranges from the study of fundamental
subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules that are the building blocks of the materials of ouruniverse and everything in it, to the DNA, proteins, and cells that are the building blocks of life.
This research is not only satisfying a fundamental human need to answer the most challenging
questions to advance our understanding of the universe. It is providing the foundational
knowledge that will yield the new discoveries and innovations in technology that are essential tofulfilling the Department’s missions in energy and environmental stewardship. We do this by

supporting scientists through a range of funding modalities – from single principal investigatorsand small teams to large, multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional collaborations – to engage in useinspired basic research on energy production, conversion, storage, transmission, and use, and on
our understanding of the Earth systems.
These transformative scientific discoveries realized by our community are enabled by theiraccess to the world’s most advanced tools for research. We continue to invest in the developmentof the next generation of scientific tools, including the world’s most powerful computers,
brightest X-ray light sources, most intense neutron sources, and fastest information network.
Currently, the Office of Science provides the Nation’s researchers with 28 state-of-the-art
national scientific user facilities, openly available to all researchers based on the scientific meritof their proposed research. These are the most advanced tools of modern science, and together
they are helping to maintain U.S. leadership in scientific discovery and technology development
and deployment in critical industries necessary for our Nation’s economic competitiveness.
The diverse portfolio of scientific research and enabling capabilities we support today began
decades earlier with the Manhattan Project. The development of the research apparatus needed tocreate the first nuclear weapons became the Department’s National Laboratory complex. The
particle accelerators and colliders developed to support the Nations burgeoning civilian nuclear
research program became the scientific tools that were used to unravel deep mysteries of theuniverse and, eventually, evolved into the suite of X-ray light and neutron sources being used todevelop novel materials for a host of applications. The world-leading computers and the Officeof Science’s computational science and applied mathematics programs were seeded by John von
Neumann, a commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and a pioneer incomputing. This started a succession of investments over many years into ever more powerfulcomputing capabilities at the national laboratories that have driven, and continue to drive,
progress in the U.S. and internationally in high-performance computing (HPC), including in thecomputing industry.
The Office of Science and its community, including its world-class researchers at the national
laboratories, play a pivotal role in helping to advance science and technology across many
domains. This has been true for decades, even in the Department’s formative years. The
Department’s role in developing and maintaining the Nation’s nuclear deterrent led to thedevelopment of a scientific program to understand the impact of radiation on biological systems.
The tools and scientific expertise needed to understand this complex phenomenon would
eventually lead to DOE’s partnership with the National Institutes of Health on the Human
Genome Project and the mapping of the human genome. The Office of Science and DOE havelong played an important role in advancing the missions of other Federal agencies – from humanhealth and wellbeing to national defense to the exploration of the stars. This work has
consistently paid dividends for advancing our own missions in science and energy.
As reflected in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 President’s Budget Request, the Office of Science willcontinue to invest in the most compelling foundational research across its core scientificprograms, in providing the most advanced tools for scientific discovery and technology
development, and in a laboratory complex that is unequivocally the world’s most comprehensive

collection of scientific and technical talent. But we are also looking to the future. We are making
crucial investments, and working with our partners across the interagency, to rapidly advance thescience and technology that is expected to dominate the 21st Century. These advancements – inartificial intelligence (AI), quantum information science (QIS), microelectronics, and systems
biology, among others – are critical to solving the most pressing challenges we face as a Nation
and a member of the global community. These challenges include ensuring affordable clean
energy technologies for the future, tackling the climate crisis, and addressing the ongoing
COVID-19 global pandemic, among others.
We are also investing in our Nation’s scientific workforce, ensuring that we have the talent weneed to make critical science and technology advancements. And underpinning all these efforts is
a commitment to the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion: in the 10 DOE national
laboratories we steward, in the research and facilities we support in the scientific community, in
our own staff, and in the workforce development programs we invest in.
Our success in these efforts requires that we leverage expertise across traditional disciplinary
boundaries. It requires that we utilize our unique ability to build multi-disciplinary coalitions ofexperts with diverse perspectives and backgrounds from institutions in the US and abroad. And it
requires that we harness our expertise in conducting science at scales not possible by individual
researchers or even individual institutions.
I will now highlight examples of the ongoing work within the Office of Science that will position
the U.S. to address the challenges of the 21st century.
Laying the Foundation for a Sustainable Clean Energy Future
Clean, efficient, and affordable energy systems of the future, whether they tap sunlight, store
electricity, or make fuel from splitting water or converting carbon dioxide, will not be realizedby simple improvements in today’s technologies. Instead, these future energy systems will
require new materials and chemical transformations that will enable exquisite control of physicaland chemical processes and convert energy efficiently from one form to another. The ability tocontrol physical and chemical processes may also be inspired by processes employed by nature,
which allow plants to convert sunlight into energy and carbon dioxide into biomaterials andallow systems to “self-heal” and change functionality with conditions. For example, recent
advances in genome engineering are providing new possibilities to manipulate metabolic
pathways within plants and microorganisms to increase carbon capture and convert it to an everbroader range of fuels, chemicals, and bioproducts.
Achieving such atomic, molecular, and genomic level control of materials and processes for
future energy systems requires understanding the underpinning principles that can only be
revealed by basic science. Today, Office of Science-supported research is entering a new era inwhich materials will be precisely synthesized atom-by-atom to realize specific functionalities,
and chemical processes will be designed with increasing efficiency and accuracy at themolecular scale. Likewise, through genome engineering techniques, modification of carbon
capture pathways found in nature will be enhanced. Powerful computational tools will allow us
to predict the properties and dynamic behavior of materials, as well as chemical and biologicalprocesses, before they have been experimentally realized. And next-generation characterization
tools will not only reveal the structure of the resulting materials and processes at the atomic
level, they will allow us to observe how the atoms are incorporated into and contribute to thematerial’s function, and how that functionality evolves over time while in use.
Office of Science user facilities play a critical role in the Nation’s energy research toolkit –providing resources for the entire research community, from academia to industry. The capability
to design and implement the complex structures, compositions, and chemical and biologicalprocesses that control energy conversion is now within reach. Collectively, these new tools andcapabilities convey a significant strategic advantage for the Nation to advance scientific frontiers
while laying the foundation for future innovations in clean energy systems, environmental
justice, and economic prosperity.
Advancing the Science Underpinning Climate Resilience
Addressing climate change requires understanding the complex interplay of atmospheric, land,
ocean, cryosphere, and human components of the Earth taken as system. These components are
dynamic over huge length and time scales, ranging from fractions of a second to years and fromsub-millimeters to kilometers. Achieving this understanding requires the development ofpredictive models that incorporate the myriad interactions and feedbacks within the Earthsystem. These predictions are critically important as they affect the resilience of energy andrelated infrastructures, as well as our quality of life.
The Office of Science is focused on improving predictive Earth system models using DOE’s
most powerful computers, employing networks of high-resolution field observations, anddeveloping new approaches to assimilate and analyze data that take advantage of state-of-the-art
AI, edge computing, 5G, and other data analytics capabilities. The linkage of predictive models
with experiments is enabled further by field research using the Atmospheric Radiation
Measurement user facility and other ecological and watershed observatories, as well as theunique suites of analytical capabilities available to the user community at the Environmental
Molecular Science Laboratory.
Emerging science areas for the Office of Science include development of new in situ
experimental sites that extend our examination of climate change into mixed environments
involving urban, coastal, and other vulnerable regions that are experiencing more extreme
climate phenomena, such as severe heat waves, drought, flood, and wildfire. New Urban
Integrated Field Laboratories, proposed in the President’s FY 2022 Budget Request, will
incorporate environmental justice as a key tenet of our research involving the most climatesensitive and vulnerable communities, and future plans will include connecting frontline
communities with the key climate science capabilities at the DOE national laboratories.
Quantum Information Science, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, andMicroelectronics
The Office of Science has a critical role in ensuring continued advances in emerging
technologies, including QIS, AI/ML, and microelectronics research. These critical technologies
have the potential to accelerate progress in our scientific research and energy missions whileproviding the foundations for future advances contributing to our nation’s economic prosperity
and national security. Several recent statutes, including the National Quantum Initiative Act andthe National Defense Authorization Act of 2021, which includes the National Artificial
Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020, have directed the Department to conduct research toaccelerate scientific breakthroughs in these key areas.
The Office of Science is taking a comprehensive approach that includes considerations ofresearch, workforce, and tools development that are needed to ensure U.S. leadership in these,
and other, areas. For example, we are demonstrating our leadership in QIS through investments
in basic research and the National QIS Research Centers. Established in FY 2020, the five
Centers are each led by one of the DOE national labs and include partners from universities andindustry. In addition to establishing robust research programs, the Centers are developing
workforce training programs and internship opportunities for students who will be our emerging
STEM leaders in this field.
The Office of Science continues to support advances in AI by developing new ML algorithms
that are understandable and repeatable, along with data analysis tools and data-focused
approaches that are free from bias and easily coupled with our more traditional physics-based
computer simulations. In the field of microelectronics, the Office of Science focuses on basic
research to enable advances in new materials, computing paradigms and architecture, andintegrated sensing, among others. There are strong linkages among the frontiers inmicroelectronics, AI/ML, and QIS, presenting synergistic development opportunities.
The U.S. is faced with fierce international competition in these critical emerging technology
areas, presenting a significant risk to our Nation’s economic and national security. Continued
investments, such as those included in the American Jobs Plan, will ensure U.S. global
leadership in these emerging technologies with significant benefits to the society.
Office of Science’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Effort
Success in fostering and stewarding a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce is critical forsustaining a diverse pool of talented scientists, engineers, and technicians with the critical skills
and expertise needed for supporting Office of Science research activities, including staffing at
the DOE national laboratories. The Office of Science strives to advance diversity, equity, andinclusion (DEI) to ensure that the U.S. physical science enterprise and the nation’s science,technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) ecosystems are robust and second to none.
In 2019, the Office of Science assessed the management of our portfolio of research awards andscientific facilities to identify opportunities to advance DEI in our business practices. This
review included how the Office of Science issues solicitations, conducts peer reviews, makes
award selection decisions, conducts principal investigator meetings and technical workshops, andreviews performance of ongoing research awards. Over 40 recommended actions were identified
to advance DEI in Office of Science processes, and we are now taking steps to implement thoserecommendations.
In 2016, the Office of Science changed how it sets expectations for advancing DEI at the 10
national laboratories it stewards. Instead of a traditional compliance-based approach, weestablished requirements for each laboratory to develop actionable DEI strategies, which arereviewed annually to assess progress and provide feedback. In 2019, an inaugural external peer
review of each lab’s DEI strategy was conducted, engaging distinguished reviewers to identify
both strengths of the laboratories’ DEI efforts and opportunities for improvement. Notably,leadership at the Office of Science-stewarded National Laboratories have demonstrated a strong
commitment to the type of changes that are needed to help ensure the laboratories succeed in
attracting and retaining the diverse, skilled workforce that is so critical to delivering on the DOE
mission.
The Office of Science has a long history in supporting research at Minority Serving Institutions(MSIs) and at institutions unrepresented in the Federal R&D landscape, such as through the
Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR. However, the Office of
Science recognizes the need to be more intentional in our efforts to reach individuals andinstitutions underrepresented in our research portfolio. In 2020, an internal group was establishedto develop recommendations for increasing participation of MSIs and underrepresented groups in
Office of Science research, especially in research projects led by faculty from these institutions.
We are working to implement these recommended actions.
Within the FY 2022 President’s Request, the Office of Science proposes to initiate a new activity
called Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce, or RENEW, which will significantly
increase outreach and greatly expand undergraduate and graduate student training opportunities
to underrepresented and underserved stakeholder groups, including Tribal Communities,
Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and other MSIs.
Office of Science as the Leader of DOE’s COVID-19 Pandemic Response
The Office of Science oversees broad capabilities in biological, physical, and computational
sciences that have enabled the revolution in modern biological sciences, including developing
technologies for genome sequencing, proteomics, CRISPR gene editing, and others. The Officeof Science is also steward of world-leading user facilities, including X-ray and neutron facilities,
high-performance computers, and nanoscience centers, that support the greater biology
community in studies ranging from understanding fundamental details of cellular processes
critical for realizing the future bioeconomy to development of new drugs and vaccines.
Recently, the Office of Science’s unique capabilities were rapidly marshalled to address threats
to the Nation’s health and economic security posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Led by the
Office of Science, the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory, or NVBL, harnessed theexpertise and capabilities of all 17 of DOE’s national laboratories to make outstanding
contributions in our Nation’s fight against COVID-19. Accomplishments include developing
new manufacturing approaches to address shortages in N95 masks and test kit supplies, which
created over 1000 new jobs; supporting the development of the mRNA vaccines with structural
studies of SARS CoV-2 at the X-ray light sources; projecting disease spread under various
scenarios to local, state, and national decision makers; verifying testing procedures incollaboration with the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control andPrevention; and identifying potential antiviral drug candidates using DOE’s high-performancecomputers and X-ray light and neutron sources.

The expertise and resources that the Office of Science oversees represent a unique resource
within the Federal Government to address the threat of future emergent diseases and otherbiological threats to the security of the Nation’s health, agriculture, and environment. More
broadly, the scientific and technical expertise and capabilities the Office of Science supports at
the DOE National Laboratories can contribute meaningfully to addressing the research needs thatarise in response to local, national, and international crises, as has been demonstrated in the pastwith responses to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, andother emergencies.
International Collaboration to Accelerate Advancements in Science and Technology
The Office of Science’s pursuit of the best science necessitates international collaboration that
upholds the norms and principles of openness, transparency, and reciprocal collaboration. We
collaborate to enable cutting-edge research that no nation can achieve alone; to train a robust anddiverse science and technology workforce; to leverage resources such as funding, expertise, andfacilities; and to strengthen our scientific and diplomatic relations. Collaborations range frominternational agreements with binding intellectual property terms and conditions related tocontributions and data sharing, to non-binding statements of intent and memoranda ofunderstanding to promote cooperation and exchanges.
While international collaboration has always been critical to the success of our programs, theOffice of Science created an office last year specifically to guide our international cooperation
posture. In addition to facilitating cooperation with international partners, the office is
responsible for taking a strategic approach to advancing science cooperation with allies andpartners while addressing issues of competition, particularly in critical and emerging areas ofscience and technology.
Maintaining the Security of DOE’s Scientific Enterprise
America’s leadership in science and technology is underpinned by the unique strengths of ouropen scientific enterprise. The openness of our innovation ecosystem enables international
collaboration that advances the frontiers of science and attracts the world’s most talented
scientists and engineers to our shores. However, it has become clear that certain foreign
governments, including the People’s Republic of China, seek to exploit the openness of ourinnovation ecosystem and undermine our economic and national security. DOE, with significant
support from the Office of Science, is managing these risks while maintaining an open,
collaborative, and world-leading enterprise.
In addition to working with the White House and the interagency to develop and implement
National Security Presidential Memorandum-33 on Government Supported Research andDevelopment Policy, DOE has also taken actions to protect our scientific enterprise. We haveestablished an agency-wide body to coordinate issues related to research security and haveinstituted policies to manage risks to research security. These policies include prohibiting
Federal and DOE national laboratory personnel from participating in foreign government
sponsored talent recruitment programs from certain countries, centralizing oversight ofinternational engagements undertaken by each national laboratory and developing a Science andTechnology Matrix to manage risks associated with critical and emerging technologies that do
not otherwise have control mechanisms.
Mutually Beneficial Collaboration with Interagency Partners
The Office of Science has a long and fruitful history of coordination and collaboration with R&D
funding agencies across the Federal Government. The Office of Science plays leading roles innumerous ongoing efforts, led by our colleagues at the White House, to develop and implement
coordinated, government-wide strategies for the advancement of the most impactful science andtechnology priorities, including AI, QIS, microelectronics, and climate change, as well as thedevelopment of policies that promote the sharing and use of research products derived fromFederal R&D investments and protect the output of those investments from misappropriation. As
described above, in response to COVID-19 and other crises, the Office of Science and its
laboratories worked closely with agency partners to ensure our expertise, capabilities, and uniquefacilities could be leveraged to support the U.S. response. We also continue a long tradition offruitful bilateral and multilateral interagency collaboration on foundational research activities
with organizations like the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, and National Institutes of Health (NIH). Such collaborations have led totransformative advances across science in areas such as particle physics, climate science, andbiomedicine.
The partnership with NIH is a representative example of the mutual benefit that comes fromcollaboration with agencies having unique but complimentary missions to the Office of Science.
The history of coordination and collaboration between DOE and the NIH spans decades andincludes early efforts to pioneer ion beam therapy of cancer and map the human genome, joint
funding for the SPEAR3 upgrade at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource andongoing support for end stations at all 5 DOE X-ray light sources, and medical isotope
production. The successes of our partnerships with NIH are widely recognized, including by
Congress, which has consistently encouraged the Office of Science to pursue these efforts inrecent years.
To that end, we continue this tradition by supporting a robust portfolio of collaborative efforts
across multiple NIH Institutes and Centers. With the National Nuclear Security Administration(NNSA), the Office of Science continues its partnership with the National Cancer Institute (NCI)
in the Joint Design for Advanced Computing Solutions for Cancer program. Entering its fifth
year, the projects supported by this program continue to develop new computing tools that
integrate novel AI and Uncertainty Quantification technology and that take advantage of the
Department’s advances in computing to accelerate discovery in cancer research. We continue
support for long-standing partnerships with NCI to advance accelerator science and technology
for medical applications and to develop and translate promising radioisotope-based treatments
for cancer. We continue to coordinate with the National Institute of General Medical Sciences
and National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering on the development of andsupport for bioimaging capabilities that utilize the unique capabilities of our X-ray light sources.
We are also establishing entirely new, multi-disciplinary partnerships. Recently establishedcollaborations with NIH in both AI and computational neuroscience can contribute to advancing

both of these fields to the benefit of our core science missions. Over the past year, we have been
exploring with the NIH Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies®
(BRAIN) Initiative the opportunity for DOE to bring its expertise in imaging, computing, anddata science to bear on the BRAIN Initiative’s transformational challenge of comprehensively
mapping the neural structures in complex brains. The technical innovations required to meet thischallenge, as well as the scientific discoveries that would arise from developing wiring diagramsin complex brains, can be similarly impactful to advancing the Office of Science mission,
including in the development of novel AI technologies and neuro-inspired computing
architectures.
The DOE National Laboratories as Engines of Innovation
DOE national laboratories represent a unique resource as anchors of economic and workforce
development in their regional economies, many of which include underserved and transitioning
communities. To maximize their impact, the Office of Science, with our colleagues throughout
the DOE, is encouraging and supporting national laboratory place-based innovation. Throughthis initiative, we working to further enhance commercialization efforts at the national nabs,
drive sustainable and equitable economic growth in underinvested regions of the U.S., create
long-term jobs in new and revitalized industries, advance new breakthrough technologies, andtrain and educate our future diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce. laboratory examples
include the development at Brookhaven National Laboratory of Discovery Park, located justoutside its gates, and the Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Laboratory
downtown Chicago office, both of which will provide opportunities for collaborations withexternal partners as well as expanded economic and community development activities.
In addition, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is working with University of Tennessee, theTennessee Valley Authority, and other local partners to establish the Oak Ridge-Knoxvilleregion as an innovation center. The laboratory has recently launched the Techstars Industries of
the Future Accelerator to attract and advance world-class startups who seek to apply the latest
developments in fields such as AI, big data, cybersecurity, 5G, and clean-energy technology. We
will continue to promote these and similar efforts of DOE’s laboratories to partner with local
universities, governments, community groups, and economic development organizations tofacilitate education and workforce development; technology transfer and commercialization oflaboratory science and technology; support for startups, small, and large businesses; andcommunity services with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
STEM Training and Engagement
The DOE has a more than 65-year history of training and educating scientists, engineers, andtechnicians, providing a pipeline for talent that forms the foundation of DOE’s science andtechnology enterprise. Today, these activities include support for over 8,500 undergraduate andgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows through R&D awards at universities and at the DOE
National Laboratories. Through the Office of Workforce Development for Teachers andScientists (WDTS), the Office of Science supports over 1,600 undergraduate internships
annually to provide research and technical training opportunities at all 17 DOE National
Laboratories. The Office of Science also supports targeted graduate training programs, such as

the Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship in high-performance computing applied toscientific and technical challenges (a partnership between the Office of Science and the NNSA);
the U.S. Particle Accelerator School for training in accelerator and detector R&D; and the Officeof Science Graduate Student Research program, which provides supplemental funding for
graduate students to conduct part of their thesis research at a DOE national laboratory.
Further, the Office of Science supports the annual DOE National Science Bowl® (NSB) to
engage middle school and high school students in one of the Nation’s largest science
competitions. In thirty years, over 315,000 students have participated in the NSB, catalyzing theentry of a new generation of scientist and engineers into STEM. In 2020, nearly 5,000 middle
school students and 9,000 high school students participated in 106 regional competitions, withnearly 500 students from over 100 schools advancing to the National Finals hosted from
Washington, D.C.
Next Generation Scientific Tools and User Facilities
The advances in science and technology described above that are critical to addressing national
challenges are not possible without our continued support for the enabling tools that comprise the
Office of Science’s 28 scientific user facilities. We cannot, however, rest on previous
accomplishments. Continuing to push scientific and technical boundaries requires investing in
the next generation of scientific tools. The Office of Science thoughtfully manages a portfolio ofmajor construction projects, as well as the necessary R&D required to meet ground-breaking
performance targets, that collectively will ensure our scientific user facilities remain world
leading. Planning for the next generation of scientific tools is tightly integrated with ourcommunities. Collectively, we develop and maintain long-term roadmaps for our facilities inorder to realize transformative capabilities needed for tomorrow’s transformative discoveries.
The portfolio of new and upgrade projects that the Office of Science is undertaking spans thebreadth of our scientific programs. These include the high-performance computers, networking,and data storage facilities, next generation high brightness light sources and high flux neutron
sources, new instrumentation for the Nanoscale Science Research Centers, high throughput
genomic tools, distributed atmospheric observation facilities, and fusion materials testing
facilities. For particle and nuclear physics, new and upgrade projects have taken advantage ofadvances in accelerator-based and related technologies to construct new facilities for isotope
production, as well as answering some of most fundamental questions on the origin of matter. In
addition, the Office of Science is working with our international partners to realize the next
generation of mega-science projects that will continue to push back the boundaries of ourunderstanding of the universe. The key examples are the neutrino physics projects and theassociated accelerator and detector upgrades.
Infrastructure for 21st Century Science Needs
The Office of Science mission is supported by the 17 DOE National Laboratories, with the mostsignificant contributions coming from the 10 national laboratories that we directly steward.
These 10 laboratories were established in the 1940’s to 1960’s and are now 60 to 80 years old.
The scientific research facilities at these laboratories, including accelerators, light sources, high-performance computers, and a nuclear reactor, are supported by general-purpose infrastructure
and utilities. These laboratories contain more than 1,600 buildings accounting for 24 million
gross square feet, roads, utilities, and other supporting infrastructure assets on more than 18,000
acres of land. Nearly two-thirds of this support infrastructure, including utility systems, is rated
as substandard or inadequate, resulting in unplanned outages, costly repairs, elevated safety risks
and inefficiencies.
In collaboration with Office of Science programs and the laboratories, our Science Laboratories
Infrastructure (SLI) program works to address identified deficiencies to reduce their impacts on
the mission. Since 2006 and with Congress’ support, the SLI program has invested over $1.8
billion to support general purpose buildings and utilities in line-item construction, general plant,
and focused utility projects that have successfully provided modern, reliable, and mission-readyfacilities and infrastructure to support the Office of Science mission now and into the future. The
infrastructure needs and priorities of the laboratories are evaluated annually by SLI program.
Projects considered are evaluated on their ability to integrate mission readiness, cost savings
including energy and water, environment safety and health issues, sustainability, resilience, andreliability. Our continued emphasis, through SLI and other efforts at our laboratories, on
addressing core infrastructure issues across the Office of Science-stewarded laboratories will
help make it possible for the laboratories to continue to provide scientific and technicalleadership for decades to come.
Conclusion
Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso, and Members of the Committee, thank you
again for the opportunity to speak about the Office of Science and its role in the U.S. science andtechnology ecosystem. This Administration is strongly committed to ensuring that the Office of
Science has the resources needed to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. We do this throughcontinued investment in our core scientific research programs and scientific infrastructure, as
well as through robust, targeted investments in the exciting new areas of science and technologythat are shaping the future. We will continue to work closely with our partners at other R&D
agencies, and with Congress, in realizing a robust science and technology ecosystem in the U.S.
As the Senate and its colleagues in the House continue to consider how to strengthen the U.S.
research enterprise and our global competitiveness, the Office of Science and DOE are prepared
to contribute robustly to those discussions. DOE and the Office of Science are enthusiastic about
increasing Federal funding for R&D and look forward to discussions on how best to takeadvantage of the unique strengths of all of our Federal R&D funding agencies in order toadvance the goals set forth in the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. As described above, weare leading the way in advancing the science and developing the technology that will enable
innovations in many of the priority technology areas called out, including AI/ML, HPC,
semiconductors, QIS, synthetic biology, energy storage, and others. We have already expressed
our desire to our NSF colleagues to expand coordination and collaboration should this Act
become law.
I would be happy to take any questions you have.