Error processing SSI file
William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular
Sciences Laboratory (EMSL)
Scientific breakthroughs leading to new sources of energy such as hydrogen, new catalysts and materials, new insights into climate change and carbon sequestration processes, new approaches to managing legacy wastes such as radionuclide and heavy metal contamination from former weapons production activities, and insights into the natural world that may contribute to making bioenergy sources a reality, cannot be fully understood without detailed knowledge of the physical, chemical and biological processes occurring at the most fundamental levels. The complex nature of DOE’s energy, science and environmental missions demands a wide range of leading-edge experimental and computational capabilities to enable scientists to conduct multidisciplinary research that will lead to scientific advances to help address the DOE missions.

Few institutions can match the leading-edge experimental and computational capabilities and the supporting scientific expertise provided by the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) a National Scientific User Facility located at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington. The mission of the EMSL is to provide integrated experimental and computational resources for discovery and technological innovation in the environmental molecular sciences to support the needs of DOE and the nation.

The mission, vision and strategic goals for EMSL are outlined in the EMSL Strategic Plan. EMSL provides value to DOE and the nation by:

The facilities and capabilities of the EMSL are available to the general scientific and engineering communities to conduct research in the environmental molecular sciences and related areas.  EMSL supports both open and proprietary research.  Open research is basic and applied research in science and engineering where the resulting information is ordinarily published and shared broadly within the scientific community. A limited amount of proprietary research may also be conducted in the EMSL under a proprietary sales contract.

Potential users may submit a proposal for use of EMSL capabilities through the EMSL web page at any time; however, EMSL periodically issues focused calls for time allocation proposals. All proposals are reviewed for scientific merit, appropriateness of the requested capability, relevance to DOE’s missions and competence of the investigator(s).

To optimize the impact of EMSL’s user program, EMSL issues focused calls for proposals that are responsive to EMSL’s four science themes: Biological Interactions and Interfaces, Geochemistry/Biogeochemistry and Subsurface Science, Atmospheric Aerosol Chemistry, and Science of Interfacial Phenomena. The four science themes are aligned with broad program areas within the DOE Office of Science and thereby with DOE’s missions. In addition, they enable EMSL to focus its resources and future capital equipment investments in areas of research that will contribute scientific understanding to support DOE’s programs.

EMSL’s Signature capabilities include a suite of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers, (ranging from 300 to 900 MHz), a suite of high performance mass spectrometers including an 11.5 Tesla mass spectrometer), and a high performance supercomputer (11+ TeraFlops) and associated visualization and data storage capabilities; however, the co-location of the entire spectrum of experimental capabilities with a high performance computer in a 200,000 ft2 building enables EMSL to provide user with the ability to integrate experimental and theoretical molecular-scale environmental studies in a problem-solving environment.

The EMSL problem-sovling environment enables Scientific Grand Challenge research efforts that contribute scientific understanding to help address DOE’s missions. EMSL is supporting two Scientific Grand Challenges that bring together groups of users to focus their research efforts for several years on important scientific challenges of interest to DOE, and to make significant use of the broad range of EMSL’s instrumentation and computational resources. The Biogeochemistry Grand Challenge (BGC) is focused on the mechanism by which electrons are transferred across the membrane of metal-reducing bacteria to iron and manganese oxides, a fundamental issue relevent to bioremediation of metal- and radionuclide-contaminated subsurface environments. The Membrane Biology Grant Challenge (MBGC) is using a systems biology apporach to determin the underlying network that governs the forms and functions of the membranes of a byanobacterial species so that scientists can better understand the role of cyanobacteria in carbon sequestration and energy cycling.

While EMSL’s capabilities are organized into six research facilities:

EMSL image

1) Chemistry and Physics of Complex Systems, 2) Environmental Spectroscopy and Biogeochemistry, 3) High-Field Magnetic Resonance, 4) High-Performance Mass Spectrometry, 5) Interfacial and Nanoscale Science, and 6) Molecular Science Computing, EMSL’s problem-solving environment is being used to conduct fundamental studies in:

Finally, in addition to using the EMSL capabilities on-site, users can operate some of the EMSL instrumentation remotely. For example, most of the NMR’s can be operated remotely through the virtual NMR facility, and the high performance computer can be accessed remotely.

Although more than half of EMSL’s users were from academia during fiscal year 2007, approximately 40% of those users accessed multiple capabilities within EMSL. Users come to EMSL to use these multiple capabilities because there is no other user facilities that provides so many complementary experimental resources, or both experimental and computational resources, in a single location.

Research highlights, facility information and user activities are described in a variety of EMSL publications. Every two months, the biomonthly reports provide information regarding user research highlights, user and staff awards and recognition, facility and instrument upgrades, visitors to EMSL, and publications and presentations. The EMSL Newsletter is a periodic publication that provides topical information via a series of articles. Through the one-page In Brief fliers, the scientific community receives breaking news and highlights from EMSL. Finally, the EMSL Annual Report provides an annual compilation of the research highlights, facility information and user activities by EMSL facility, along with a list of publications and presentations for the year.

The Environmental Remediation Sciences Division (ERSD) within DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), Office of Science provides the operations and capital equipment budget for EMSL. The operations funding enables operation and maintenance of the facility and its research instrumentation and computational capabilities, and facility-wide infrastructure and user support staff. The capital equipment funding enables EMSL to maintain leading-edge experimental capabilities for users to conduct environmental molecular science research. Additional programmatic information about EMSL is available on the EMSL homepage

November 2007

Program Manager

Mr. Paul Bayer
Environmental Remediation Sciences Division
Office of Biological and Environmental Research
SC-23.4/Germantown Building
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20585-1290
Voice: 301-903-5324
Fax: 301-903-4154
paul.bayer@science.doe.gov