Assistant Professors Martha Constantinou and Qimin Yan have each earned Department of Energy (DOE) Early Research Program grants.

This year, DOE's Office of Science selected 73 scientists from across the nation - including 27 from DOE's national laboratories and 46 from U.S. universities - to receive significant funding for research as part of the Early Career Research Program. The effort is designed to bolster the nation's scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work.

Under the program, university-based researchers will receive about $150,000 per year to cover summer salary and research expenses. For researchers based at DOE national laboratories, where DOE typically covers full salary and expenses of laboratory employees, grants will be about $500,000 per year to cover year-round salary plus research expenses. The research grants are planned for five years.

Constantinou's project is titled "EIC physics from lattice QCD" and Yan's work focuses on synthesis of motif and symmetry for accelerated learning, discovery and design of electronic structures for energy conversion applications.

To be eligible for the DOE award, a researcher must be an untenured, tenure-track assistant or associate professor at a U.S. academic institution or a full-time employee at a DOE national laboratory, who received a PhD within the past 10 years. Research topics are required to fall within one of the Department's Office of Science's six major program offices: Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy Sciences, Biological and Environmental Research, Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics, and Nuclear Physics.