Award Data

Ensuring adequate agricultural productivity in the face of an increasing human population is a major concern with implications for both production of bioenergy products (Jones and Hinsinger, 2008) and global food security. Increasing agricultural productivity requires a stronger understanding of soil biogeochemical processes that impact plant nutrient availability. We propose development of an inn ...

Society at large and DOE in particular have an interest in the continued development and refinement of a smart grid infrastructure that more efficiently and reliably matches electrical resources to demands. While technological advances in recent years have improved the smart grid, these advances have been limited by a lack of granularity of data (e.g. environmental conditions at multiple locations ...

Silicon wafers are the single largest cost component within solar photovoltaic modules. To maintain the cost reduction targets outlined in industrial roadmaps, wafer costs need to be significantly reduced. Reducing the cost of wafers requires reducing the kerf-loss and wafer thickness while increasing throughput in tools for processing silicon ingots into wafers. The proposed technology augments t ...

Nutrient pollution of lakes, estuaries, coastal areas and other water bodies frequently results in algae blooms, sometimes toxic, and often leading to anoxia, fish kills and dead zones. Efforts to reign-in nutrient pollution, in particular of phosphorus, P, have been lagging and noxious algae blooms make headlines almost daily all over the US and world. This is a problem attracting increasing atte ...

Electrical power is scarce at most offshore locations, so oceanographers design buoy systems to consume very little power in order to reduce the frequency of ship voyages to replace batteries. These expensive voyages can cost several tens of thousands of dollars per day. Solar and wind power can recharge batteries, but harvested power is limited and each source has shortcomings. Wave energy operat ...

Technologies for terrestrial ecosystem management – in the area of precision agriculture and ecosystem restoration – have made significant advances recently for more sustainable practices by optimizing water, nutrients, and fertilizers Many of these technologies include monitoring and imaging of plants, soil, and crop harvest as well as their interactions, using in situ sensors, remote sensing ...

Wind and solar electricity are gaining traction in the marketplace, but the electricity available from these sources is out of synch with demand Protonic ceramic electrochemical cells (PCECs) operating at intermediate temperatures (400 - 650°C) have enormous potential for electricity storage and delivery by reversible operation between electrolysis and fuel cell modes and therefore stand to addre ...

Solar fuels production is necessary for the future of the global economy New highly conductive and stable polymer-electrolytes with low light absorption are required for efficient and cost- effective solar fuels generation Opus 12 will work with Prof Chulsung Bae at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) to further develop the existing polymer-electrolyte chemistry to meet the demands of this chal ...

Quantum information sciences started as a concept many years ago, transitioned to a subject of theoretical analysis, followed by experimental efforts mainly focused on controlling individual qubits Rather dramatically, the last couple of years have witnessed a significant milestone with the creation of nascent functioning quantum computers operating with tens of qubits Present quantum computers, r ...

The spatiotemporal quantification of coupled hydro-biogeochemical processes between soil, plant, and atmosphere requires advances in remote sensing technologies and in understanding the link between the measured signals (ie spectral traits) and the hydro-biochemical properties While current UAV-based remote sensing technologies provide spectral reflectance in the visible- short wave infrared (VSWI ...