DOE Announces $70 Million to Help Build a Diverse STEM Workforce

 
Published: 11 October 2023

RENEW Initiative supports 40 Minority-Serving Institutions

To help diversify scientific leadership, DOE)recently announced $70 million in funding to support research by historically underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
To help diversify scientific leadership, DOE recently announced $70 million in funding to support research by historically underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced $70 million in funding to support research by historically underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to diversify scientific leadership.

Through DOE’s Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative (BER-RENEW – FOA-0002929), the funding supports internships, training programs, and mentoring opportunities at 65 institutions, including 40 higher-learning institutions that serve minority populations. The initiative aims to ensure that the best and brightest students in the United States have pathways to STEM fields and will have a role in achieving key energy and climate goals.

There were eight awards through the DOE Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program:

“To compete on the global stage, America will need to draw scientists and engineers from every pocket of the nation, and especially from communities that have been historically underrepresented in STEM,” says U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The RENEW initiative will support talented, motivated students to follow their passions for science, energy, and innovation, and help us overcome challenges like climate change and threats to our national security.”

RENEW leverages DOE’s national laboratories, user facilities, and other research infrastructure to provide training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty at academic institutions currently underrepresented in the U.S. science and technology ecosystem.

Awards focus on basic research in the physical sciences, including physics, chemistry, materials science, applied mathematics, computer science, biology, and earth and environmental sciences. The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the fiscal year 2023 RENEW Funding Opportunity Announcements. The list of projects and more information can be found on the RENEW website.

Editorial note: In the near future, ASR will write and publish features on RENEW awardees Vrinceanu and Wilkins.

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This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, through the Biological and Environmental Research program as part of the Atmospheric System Research program.