Two PhD Students in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) have been selected for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Research Program (SCGSR).

ChBE’s Sidharth Laxminarayan and Lucas Timmerman are among 79 PhD students from 56 universities and 29 states selected for the prestigious program.

SCGSR prepares doctoral candidates for careers of critical importance to the Office of Science’s mission of transforming the understanding of nature and advancing the energy, economic, and national security of the United States. Participants receive world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities, expertise, and resources at DOE's national laboratories.  

“SCGSR is a unique opportunity for the next generation of scientists to gain hands-on knowledge and train with our best minds at the DOE national labs,” said Harriet Kung, acting director of the DOE Office of Science. “Providing this experience will help DOE secure the nation’s status at the forefront of discovery and innovation.” 

ChBE Student Projects

As part of the program, Laxminarayan will collaborate with Davinia Salvachúa Rodriguez in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado from June through December 2025. 

His project aims to study biochemical production bioprocess by Pseudomonas putida, a soil bacterium which is able to consume lignin and can convert it into bio-plastics precursor stocks. 

“We are studying this particular process as it will not only allow us to valorize previously inaccessible lignin feedstocks, but also allow us to increase the sustainability of our plastics production processes,” Laxminarayan said. “My project aims to build computational and experimental tools which can help us study the bioprocess using Raman spectroscopic analytical techniques.”

Timmerman will spend seven months at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with the Chemical Sciences Division. His project focuses on building software to integrate tools developed at Georgia Tech and Oak Ridge for studying the kinetics and thermodynamics of heterogeneous catalysts. 

"The project leverages the unique capabilities of the A.J. Medford and Phanish Suryanarayana groups at Georgia Tech in electronic structure theory and probabilistic machine learning with the Vanda Glezakou group’s expertise in genetic algorithms and artificial neural networks at Oak Ridge," Timmerman explained.

Award Selection

Laxminarayan, Timmerman, and other awardees were selected from a wide pool of graduate applicants. Selections were based on merit review by external scientific experts. 

Graduate students currently pursuing PhD degrees in areas of physics, chemistry, material sciences, biology, geology, planetary sciences, mathematics, engineering, computer, or computational sciences that are aligned with the mission of the Office of Science are eligible to apply to the SCGSR program. 

Research projects are expected to advance the graduate awardees’ overall doctoral research and training while providing access to the expertise, resources, and capabilities available at the DOE national laboratories. 

Since 2014, the SCGSR program has provided about 1,300 U.S. graduate awardees from 170 universities in 48 states, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico with supplemental funds to conduct part of their thesis research at DOE national laboratories in collaboration with DOE national laboratory scientists.