WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a plan to provide $24 million for the development of new projects to study dark matter. 

“The nature of dark matter remains one of the big, enduring questions of the universe,” said Under Secretary for Science Paul Dabbar. “With new developments in the field over the past few years and the game-changing research being done in the American science community, the time is right for innovative efforts to tackle the problem of dark matter.”

Projects will be designed to take advantage of important recent advances in theory and technology that may help better understand dark matter, which has never been detected but is thought to account for as much as five times the mass of ordinary matter in the universe.

Projects will be able to take advantage of facilities and technologies developed with DOE support at national laboratories, universities, and elsewhere.  Projects can be expected to make use of national laboratory particle accelerators, new detection technologies, and various underground and deep underground facilities, among other capabilities.

The aim of the current initiative is to produce detailed project designs, which may then be selected for subsequent funding for implementation. 

The Department anticipates that up to $3 million will be available for this program in Fiscal Year 2019.  A total of $24 million in funding is anticipated over the possible four-year award period, with outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations.

Letters of intent are due on April 30, 2019, by 5:00 PM Eastern. Final applications are due on May 30, 2019, by 5:00 PM Eastern. The full text of the Funding Opportunity Announcement issued by the Department’s Office of Science, along with a parallel, companion announcement for DOE national laboratories, is to be found HERE.

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