The UCLA-DOE Institute is a Cooperative Agreement with DOE-BER that brings together a team of investigators to advance the research mission areas of BER. Our leading-edge research focuses on discoveries and enabling capabilities across multiple DOE-relevant areas, including systems level understanding of microbial communities, and atomic imaging technologies using new x-ray and electron microscopy and diffraction methods. Our work in previous project periods has had substantial impacts on these important fields of science and technology.

During the next project period, the programs of the UCLA-Institute will be driven by two research teams, with each team bringing together four to five investigators (typically from different departmental units across campus) with shared interests and complementary expertise. The two project mission areas for new discoveries and innovation are: (1) Microbial Systems: Energy and Biomass, focusing on syntrophic metabolism and cellulolytic microbes; and (2) Atomic Structure and Enabling Capabilities, with systems from project 1 (and other DOE-BER collaborations) serving as testbeds for technical innovations in project 2.

We anticipate accelerated discoveries that advance our understanding of fundamental science, with significance for processes of microbial energy conversions and degradation of biomass, and discoveries and insights into protein and gene function and molecular structure across length scales. We further anticipate important practical advances from technical innovations involving new approaches for determining atomic level structures using x-ray and EM (electron microscopy/diffraction) techniques. Our fundamental discoveries and technical advances will break new ground and enable further exploration by broad communities of researchers working in the scope of the DOE mission.