Science Research Groups

Urbanism. What is it? Planners evaluate and define urbanism with diverse criteria: vehicle-miles traveled, density, transit viability, jobs-housing balance, etc. But ultimately urbanism is about life. It's about the vitality and opportunities possible when people live together in neighborhoods, villages, towns and cities. We create visions of pedestrian-friendly, socially-interactive communities by transforming photographs with photo-editing software. The results are photo-realistic visualizations that make development visions palpably real and understandable. We help cities, community groups, non-profit organizations, developers, property owners, and transit agencies effectively communicate possibilities.

The Waterways Experiment Station (WES) is headquarters for the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC). Part of the Department of Defense laboratory system, the ERDC has as its mission to conceive, plan, study and execute engineering investigations and research and development studies in support of the civil and military missions of the Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies. Four of seven ERDC laboratories are located at the WES site in Vicksburg, Miss. Coastal and Hydraulics, Geotechnical and Structures, Environmental, and Information Technology.

The Ohio Coal Research Center, a unit within the Department of Chemical Engineering in the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ College of Engineering and Technology at Ohio University, brings together multidisciplinary teams to research fuel diversity and the production of environmentally safe and reliable electric power. The center also manages the Ohio Coal Research Consortium for the State of Ohio's Air Quality Development Authority.

The Office of Fossil Energy is responsible for several high-priority Presidential initiatives including implementation of the Administration's $2 billion, 10-year initiative to develop a new generation of environmentally sound clean coal technologies, the $1 billion FutureGen project to develop a pollution-free plant to co-produce electricity and hydrogen, and the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve and Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, both key emergency response tools available to the President to protect Americans from energy supply disruptions. Areas of research include coal and natural gas power systems, carbon sequestration, hydrogen and other clean fuels, oil and gas supply and delivery, natural gas regulation, electricity regulation, and petroleum reserves.

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography Visualization Center at the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics is a state-of-the-art visualization facility for presenting and manipulating very large datasets. In addition to housing a Highly Immersive Visualization Environment [HIVE] we are involved in the development and application of the Geowall visualization system, the Optiputer project, and geoscience research.

Since 1949, Sandia National Laboratories has developed science-based technologies that support our national security. Today, over 272 million Americans depend on Sandias technology solutions to solve national and global threats to peace and freedom. Through science and technology, people, infrastructure, and partnerships, Sandia's mission is to meet national needs in five key areas: Nuclear Weapons ensuring the stockpile is safe, secure, reliable, and can support the United States' deterrence policy. Nonproliferation and Assessments reducing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the threat of nuclear accidents, and the potential for damage to the environment. Military Technologies and Applications addressing new threats to national security. Energy and Infrastructure Assurance enhancing the surety of energy and other critical infrastructures. Homeland Security helping to protect our nation against terrorism. Sandia is a government-owned/contractor operated (GOCO) facility. Lockheed Martin manages Sandia for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. We seek collaborative partnerships on emerging technologies that support our mission.

MIT's Biological Engineering Division was established in 1998 to provide a multidisciplinary approach to the solution of challenges at the interface of modern biology and engineering. Molecular and cellular biology are integrated with core principles from chemical, electrical, mechanical engineering & computer science to create the new intellectual discipline of Biological Engineering. Biological Engineering addresses scientific and technological questions across the full breadth of scales in biology: molecular, cellular, tissue, organism, and systems. The educational programs in the Biological Engineering Division reflect this emphasis on science and engineering approaches to biological problems, with opportunities for graduate studies in either Applied Biosciences or Bioengineering.

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is the flagship scientific computing facility for the Office of Science in the U.S. Department of Energy. As one of the largest facilities in the world devoted to providing computational resources and expertise for basic scientific research, NERSC is a world leader in accelerating scientific discovery through computation. NERSC is located at Berkeley Lab in Berkeley, California. The more than 2000 computational scientists who use NERSC perform basic scientific research across a wide range of disciplines. These disciplines include climate modelling, research into new materials, simulations of the early universe, analysis of data from high energy physics experiments, investigations of protein structure, and a host of other scientific endeavors. A survey of scientific research performed at NERSC can be found in the NERSC Annual Reports. NERSC is known as one of the best run scientific computing facilities in the world.

In operation since 1949, the INL is a science-based, applied engineering national laboratory dedicated to supporting the U.S. Department of Energy's missions in nuclear and energy research, science, and national defense. The INL is operated for the Department of Energy (DOE) by Battelle Energy Alliance (BEA) and partners, each providing unique educational, management, research and scientific assets into a world-class national laboratory.

EST is Brookhaven Laboratory's focal point for applied energy research, development, demonstration and deployment (RDD&D) activities for renewable, fossil and nuclear systems. Our mission is to perform basic science, analyses and technology development that provide innovative solutions to some of the world's most important energy challenges. We draw on the broad and deep expertise of our staff and resources, who work with other experts at BNL and government laboratories, industry and academia to support Department of Energy strategic goals.

The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) is a program of the U.S. Department of Energy assigned to develop and manage a federal system for disposing of spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear reactors and high-level radioactive waste from national defense activities.

The primary mission of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) is to foster excellence in interdisciplinary research and education at the University of Maryland. The Institute strives to provide an environment in which both theoretical and experimental research can flourish. Current research programs are in the areas of Chaotic Dynamics, Chemical Physics, Optical Physics, Space and Upper Atmospheric Physics, Scientific Computation, and Statistical Physics. The Institute takes pride in the fact that one third of the Distinguished University Professors on campus hold appointments in IPST and that several of its faculty are members of the National Academy of Science.

The FAA operates the safest, most complex, and most efficient air navigation system in the world. We will continue to develop technologies that will utilize the airspace in safer, more efficient, and more environmentally sound ways. These investments involve modernize existing systems and introducing new capabilities.

Columbia University Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). About SEAS. Admissions. Bulletin. Calendar of events. Departments and centers. Directory. Engineering News. Marconi Foundation. Distance learning. News. Undergraduate students. Graduate students. Alumni. Prospective students.

Centered at UC Berkeley, CITRIS incubates research on problems that have a major impact on the economy, quality of life, and future success of California: conserving energy; education; saving lives, property, and productivity in the wake of disasters; boosting transportation efficiency; advancing diagnosis and treatment of disease; and expanding business growth through much richer personalized information services. Solutions to many of these problems have a common IT feature: at their core they depend on highly-distributed, reliable, and secure information systems that can evolve and adapt to radical changes in their environment, delivering information services that adapt to the people and organizations that need them. It is this feature that is at the heart of the initial research agenda for CITRIS.

The CAES mission is to address critical science and engineering issues that will help resolve the grand challenges associated with providing an appropriate mix of energy technologies needed to address critical U.S. and global energy needs. Although CAES will have an emphasis on nuclear energy, it will also address other energy areas that are critical to ensuring U.S. energy security, including affordability, limited environmental impacts, and leadership in the global energy arena. Energy technologies to be addressed include those for nuclear, hydrogen, and fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) and the full spectrum of renewable energy sources. CAES is part of the Idaho National Laboratory of the US Department of Energy.

The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) is a collaborative undertaking among organizations in the commercial, government, and research sectors aimed at promoting greater cooperation in the engineering and maintenance of a robust, scalable global Internet infrastructure. CAIDA provides a neutral framework to support cooperative technical endeavors.

The Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) is a campus-wide program involving faculty from the Departments of Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Computer Science, Biology, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Mechanical, Electrical, and Biological Engineering, as well as the Media Laboratoryall working at the boundary between physical science and computer science. The research program spans from the experimental investigation of molecular mechanisms to digitize fabrication (analogous to the earlier digitization of communications and computation), to the theoretical study of mathematical principles to program enormously complex engineered systems, with practical application in personal fabrication around the world. CBA was launched in 2002 by a $13.75 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which has enabled the creation of a unique facility for input and output from nanometers to meters. Along with the NSF support, CBA receives funding from partner government agencies and from its industrial sponsors.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a medical imaging method which can measure the concentration and movement of a positron emitting isotope in living tissue. Due to its inherent quantitative biochemical nature, PET is in the extraordinary position to reveal the molecular mechanisms of human disease and to facilitate the development of new drugs. The focus of the Brookhaven PET Program is to integrate research radiotracer chemistry and neuroscience to develop new scientific tools for application to problems in human health. There is a special commitment to the development of radiotracers for imaging specific molecular targets such as the brain dopamine system (shown in the diagram) and to the development of advanced PET imaging technologies.

To help ensure that California maintain its leadership in the rapidly changing telecommunications and information technology marketplace, the University of California campuses at San Diego and Irvine have created the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-(IT), pronounced cal-eye-tee squared). Our institutes mission is simple: Extend the reach of the Internet throughout the physical world. Cal-(IT) teams UCSD and UCI faculty, students, and research professionals with leading California telecommunications, computer, software, and applications companies to conduct research on the scientific and technological components needed to bring this new Internet into being. Institute applications researchers are conducting their studies in living laboratories to investigate how this future Internet will accelerate advances in environmental science, civil infrastructure, intelligent transportation and telematics, genomic medicine, the new media arts, and educational practices.