The mission of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (DNN R&D) is to support U.S. national and nuclear security objectives in reducing global nuclear security threats through the innovation of unilateral and multi-lateral technical capabilities to detect, identify, and characterize: 1) foreign nuclear weapons programs; 2) illicit diversion of special nuclear materials; and, 3) global nuclear detonations.
The intent of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to award ONE or TWO five-year cooperative agreement(s) to a consortium consisting of accredited IHE’s to allow them to receive and administer funds for student and faculty research, fellowships, and scholarship funding awarded by DOE/NNSA, DNN R&D.
The cooperative agreement will be awarded to a consortium of IHEs which will include the participation of DOE National Laboratories as a consortium-member(s). Individual consortium-member IHEs shall make specific contributions and shall receive specified portions of the funding.
The consortium may include student and research fellows and must have a long-term objective of building expertise in nuclear science and engineering. Research results should be incorporated readily into IHE curricula. Students, faculty, and researchers must be able to work unencumbered while moving across organizational and bureaucratic boundaries of the academic and governmental facilities engaged in the consortium, while properly protecting critical information and materials. The consortium should establish reciprocal arrangements between the lead IHE and other IHEs as well as relationships with appropriate DOE National Laboratories.
The direct outcome of this program is the development of professionals with skill-sets to support foundational disciplines of nuclear physics, science and engineering, radiation detection, nuclear material science, radiochemistry, and mass spectrometry. These professionals will have careers as scientists, engineers, technicians, operational personnel, and intelligence professionals, among others, and will be leaders in active in nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear arms control, nuclear incident response, nuclear intelligence activities, nuclear energy, and other nuclear-related fields. These professionals are expected to benefit academia, private industry, and several US government agencies, including Energy, State, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and the Intelligence Community.
Deadline: July 29, 2020