UC San Diego’s Center for Energy Research Shares $13.5M Grant for Campus-National Lab Collaborations

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Professor Farhat N. Beg will lead a collaborative energy project with other UC campuses and national labs.

The Center for Energy Research (CER), an organized research unit at the University of California San Diego, will share a $13.5 million, three-year University of California grant to encourage collaboration between the UC campuses and the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories.

Farhat N. Beg, professor of engineering physics at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering, CER Director and Principal Investigator for the university’s High-Energy-Density Physics (HEDP) Group, will use the UC funding on projects involving research at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, UC Santa Cruz, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos. The CER’s share of the grant is $4.1 million over three years.

“The Center for Energy Research has been among the nation’s leaders in forward-looking energy research,” said Sandra Brown, Vice Chancellor for Research at UC San Diego, who oversees the university’s organized research units, including the CER. “The UC investment will help ensure that our nation continues to develop technologies with powerful promise for improving lives.”

The 2017 UC Laboratory Fees Research Program funded four projects, all intended to “leverage UC-National Lab synergy:” the CER’s high-energy-density research; biological applications of advanced computing; and mesoscale materials science.

“My colleagues and I are grateful for the support, and look forward to the cutting-edge High Energy Density Science research and training a new generation of young scientists for our national needs,” said Professor Beg. “We will be collaborating with some of the finest scientists and researchers in the field on issues of vital importance to our society.”

Professor Beg, who received his Ph.D. degree in plasma physics from Imperial College, London, joined UC San Diego in 2003. He has been fellow of the American Physical Society since 2009 and the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers since 2011. He received the Department of Energy Early Career Award in 2005 and IEEE Early Achievement Award in 2008. Beg is currently the Vice Chair of the High Energy Density Science Association (HEDSA), an organization of scientists from academia that promotes HEDS in universities and small businesses, as well as in national laboratories. It also advocates new initiatives to maintain the health of HEDS and the related workforce in the United States.

The UC Laboratory Fees Research Program enhances partnerships between UC researchers and laboratory scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Awards from this program promote the development of projects and collaborations that advance the missions of the national laboratories and UC:

• Collaborative research between UC faculty and laboratory scientists
• UC graduate students in programs that promote interaction between laboratory scientists and UC graduate programs
• Research that takes advantage of unique laboratory facilities, especially involving students
• Research in all fields and topics aligned with the mission of the laboratories