Scolnic Earns DOE Early Career Research Program Award

Scolnic Earns DOE Early Career Research Program Award

A Duke physicist is among those to receive an Early Career Research Program Award this year from the U.S. Department of Energy, the government agency announced May 27.

Assistant Professor of Physics Dan Scolnic studies cosmology and is particularly focused on new image analysis techniques and finding optical counterparts to gravitational waves.

The research topic he submitting for the DOE award was titled “Reducing Top Systematic Uncertainties in Cosmological Analyses with Type Ia Supernovae and Contaminated Photometric Samples.”

This year’s awardees represent 41 universities and 11 DOE National Laboratories in 32 states. University-based researchers will receive grants for $150,000 per year over five years.

“Maintaining our nation’s braintrust of world-class scientists and researchers is one of DOE’s top priorities—and that means we need to give them the resources they need to succeed early on in their careers,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “These awardees show exceptional potential to help us tackle America’s toughest challenges and secure our economic competitiveness for decades to come.”

Scolnic previously earned a prestigious Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering in 2019.