The National Science Foundation gave two UT research groups $3 million dollar grants to enhance research and educational resources and to better train graduate students.

The grants are Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeships. The grants essentially will provide funding for two new graduate programs, Sustainable Technology through Advanced Interdisciplinary Research and Scalable Computing and Leading Edge Innovative Technologies.

STAIR will focus on methods of creating sustainable energy using hyrdrogen as a primary source, while SCALE-IT will focus on using computers to answer biological issues.

"The STAIR program examines the complete energy cycle, including energy production, energy storage, and energy conversion," David Keffer, director of STAIR and associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, said. "Consequently, there are three broad research tasks:  production of hydrogen via biological pathways, discovery of nanostructured materials for hydrogen storage, and understanding material structure/property relationships in hydrogen-powered fuel cells.

 "The STAIR program will force the researchers in each task to communicate with each other and understand the technical challenges in each task and how the tasks are connected through sustainability," Keffer said.

The STAIR program will also teach students how economics, policy and ethics impact sustainable energy decisions through interacting with groups such as UT's Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment, he said.

The STAIR program will let graduate students perform Ph.D.-level research and interact with the science community to overcome issues and obstacles. They will also be exposed to the social issues surrounding sustainable energy production, Keffer said.

Cynthia Peterson, a UT professor of biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, is director of SCALE-IT.

"This program builds on some important resources that are unique to our campuses at UTK and ORNL," she said. "These include the Track II supercomputer that is rapidly becoming one of the top tier high performance computers in the world.

"SCALE-IT will train a new type of scientist who is equally at home at 'the bench' and at the computer terminal," Peterson said.

Graduate students will have several opportunities for hands-on experience, she said. "Exploring the Scales" is a colloquium that students will attend in their first year, and in their second year students will work in teams, try to solve a real-world problem, and present their solution at a regional meeting, Peterson said.