Developing Partnership between San Jose State University and DOE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to Enhance Climate Research Equity and Inclusion

Developing Partnership between San Jose State University and DOE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to Enhance Climate Research Equity and Inclusion

Minghui Diao, San Jose State University (Principal Investigator)

Adam Kochanski, San Jose State University (Co-Investigator)

Increases of climate impacts in the Bay Area are raising awareness and concerns from the local communities on a multitude of topics, including wildfire activity, drought, extreme heat, sea-level rise, etc. However, limited technical resources and expertise available at Minority Serving Institutions

minority Serving Institution (MSI)

A term used to describe colleges and universities that primarily enroll and serve minority populations. These groups can include African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Asian Americans.

Source: U.S. Department of the Interior Source

(MSIs) such as San José State University (SJSU), have led to a significant gap between the state-of-the-art observational and modeling tools and MSIs’ technical capabilities. This gap has been limiting the type and scope of research, training, and education opportunities that can be developed at SJSU to advance its research and educational programs.

In this proposed work, we will build a new, long-term partnership with the local US Department of Energy (DOE) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to develop equitable and inclusive research training and education opportunities that will support faculty and students from a multi-disciplinary team at SJSU. Through previous collaboration with DOE laboratories, we have identified several key roadblocks preventing SJSU faculty and students from pursuing a wide spectrum of climate science opportunities. To break through these barriers, we propose four main tasks:

1)     Enhance data analysis proficiency, in particular expertise in utilizing current DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) data processing procedures and observation-based model diagnostic tools at LLNL.

2)     Build climate modeling expertise at SJSU and develop new capabilities to allow SJSU students and researchers to conduct numerical experiments based on the DOE Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM).

Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM)

The Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) project includes Earth System Models, simulations, and predictions to investigate energy-relevant science using code optimized for DOE's advanced supercomputers.

Source: NVCL Web Page Source

3)     Broaden collaboration between the SJSU Wildfire Research Interdisciplinary Center (SJSU-WIRC) and LLNL.

4)     Develop a workforce of graduate and undergraduate students from underserved communities, and facilitate their career advancement in climate research in national laboratories, especially in local DOE laboratories.

Unique aspects of this proposed work include the foreseeable sustainability of this partnership between SJSU and LLNL by leveraging our existing connections, and the long-term impacts of the knowledge and tools that we will learn on our faculty and student bodies at SJSU. We will provide small research scholarships to graduate students in multi-disciplinary departments, including Departments of Meteorology and Climate Science, Computer Science, Environmental Studies, and Biological Sciences. The training materials will be integrated into class teaching materials, to prepare a pipeline of students from all communities for climate science and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) related careers.