One of OSTI’s founding missions is to support education. From the early 1960s when OSTI provided educational materials on the atom and published the booklet called “Understanding the Atom” we have been committed to education. While information in OSTI databases can be used by teachers, students and parents for Kindergarten through High School, many of the technical documents and research findings are better suited for university studies.

OSTI’s databases contain thousands of university research projects that were either funded by DOE or sponsored through partnerships. Who needs this higher-level information? University students, professors and librarians need ready access to this information to advance scientific discovery! OSTI’s goal is to provide all of this information in an easily accessible, organized, online format that is available at no cost. And we’ve done just that! Now OSTI is focusing on how we can help communicate better and ensure that the DOE laboratory research communities have immediate access to these priceless resources. We’re working hard to connect with research universities across the nation to let them know about these great resources.

To that end, OSTI has connected with the education community via a new webpage launched September 1, 2009. Our new webpage, .EDUconnections, identifies core universities and academic organizations that contribute to DOE research laboratories. You will see on our “spotlight” page how their cutting-edge research solves real world problems through DOE-sponsored programs. This, in turn, helps propel our future workforce to new discoveries in engineering, mathematics and a wide variety of technical disciplines. Links are provided to the “spotlight” university or institution showing exciting new research, professors of note, and activities within their research community.
DOE resources including grants and contracts, internships, fellowships & scholarships, and Specialty Research Centers, and more are found at .EDUconnections. We also provide a widget that gives you quick access to many OSTI databases. You can “place” this widget on your desktop for quick reference.

The DOE Office of Science places a very high priority on the mission of supporting education. OSTI is organizationally located within the Office of Science, a key supporter of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers early in their careers. It’s exciting for the nation’s future to note that one-third of the Office of Science’s yearly research funding goes to support research at more than 300 colleges, universities and research institutions across the nation!
OSTI will continue to find new, creative ways to support higher education by connecting to university libraries and research programs about the availability and value of the DOE scientific and technical information. Our mission comes full circle from the early days and the “Understanding the Atom” booklet. We feel that by supporting education we can help advance science through the use of technology to share the R&D information already discovered.

Linda Ponce

OSTI