Our Laboratory Directed Research and Development program serves as a proving ground for innovative concepts, providing seed funding for selected high-risk, high-reward research ideas. It attracts promising young scientists and engineers and encourages them to pursue new approaches to problems.

 Kristin Persson, a brown-haired person wearing a black turtleneck, smiles at her desk. Jennifer Doudna and James Nunez in a laboratory

Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, a professor at UC Berkeley and faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab, is co-winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “the development of a method for genome editing.”

In 2008, Doudna’s nascent research on CRISPR RNA strands and the Cas1 protein was funded by an LDRD program award through her Berkeley Lab affiliation.

 Saul Perlmutter with Bill Nye in front of a multiscreen.

An LDRD grant in 1996 provided the critical resources for Saul Perlmutter to prove his theory that the expansion of the universe was accelerating. Perlmutter won the Nobel Prize in Physics 2011.

 Dark-haired scientist in the center of the frame looks toward the camera. They are standing behind the clear glass of an encased automated lab.

Researchers are building a new kind of automated lab that uses robots guided by artificial intelligence to accelerate the development of useful new materials. Work on A-Lab began in 2020, and the project later received funding from the LDRD Program.

 Headshot of Andrew Dopilka

Andrew is a career track research scientist in the Energy Storage group. His research focuses on the development of glass materials for energy technology applications.

 Arun Persaud, a dark-haired person wearing a blue collared shirt, poses for a headshot outdoors.

Arun’s research focuses on the application of ion beam technology from creating new quantum qubits to applying gamma-ray spectroscopy to measure the distribution of carbon in soils and applying neutron technologies for planetary sciences.

 Ting Xu, a person with medium-length black hair wearing a dark top with a colorful scarf, photographed in the Hearst Memorial Mining Building.

Xu focuses on designing, characterizing and understanding complex systems of synthetic polymers, nanoparticles and biomolecules to develop new functional materials that exhibit novel electronic, photonic, and biological properties.

 Three scientists working together in a laboratory.

Thermal Energy Group

The Thermal Energy Group conducts research in manipulating matter at nanoscale dimensions for novel applications in a multitude of thermal, solar, and electrochemical energy devices and systems.

 Two scientists looking at a plate sample.

Agile BioFoundry

The ABF, a leading public biofoundry that got its start as an LDRD project, collaborates with industry and academia to accelerate the development of biology based products and tools for bioengineering.

 Two scientists perform work on the laser table where the petawatt laser is split into two beamlines.

Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center

The BELLA Center focuses on the development and application of laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) to enable the next generation of high-energy physics for applications in science, medicine, security, and industry.

Ice Ice Maybe: New Ways to Search for Frozen Water on the Moon

Two circular topographical maps on a black background displaying distribution of surface ice at the Moon's south pole (left) and north pole (right). Blue represents the ice locations, plotted over an image of the lunar surface, where the gray scale corresponds to surface temperature (darker representing colder areas and lighter shades indicating warmer zones)

New Electron Microscopy Tech Breaks into the Elusive Realm of Small Molecules

A central column of metallic, cylindrical lenses and optical components is arranged diagonally, through which a light blue cone of light passes, projecting onto a rectangular detector plate at the bottom. A bright, neon-purple laser beam intersects the middle of the column, causing a glowing orange wave at the intersection. The setup is set against a dark purple background patterned with faint ripples small, repeating blue and red protein-like structures.

New MatterChat Model Helps AI to ‘See’ the Language of Science

A digital illustration on a black background. On the left of the image a blue and orange 3D atomic structure is displayed flowing into a neural network pattern. The pattern moves into a glowing bridge model structure and ends on the right with various nodes with text extending from each (structure, property, synthesis, stability, band gap, formation energy, magnetic order, prediction). A purple neural network brain and various cubes appear on the right side.

The LDRD program is the single most important tool Berkeley Lab has to set strategic research directions and is considered to be the Lab’s “seed funds for the future.” LDRD has been a critical component in the support of high-potential projects across the Lab, helping to grow them from proof of principle projects to fully mature — and DOE-funded — programs.