Molecular Foundry

Supported by the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) through their Nanoscale Science Research Center (NSRC) program, the Molecular Foundry is a national User Facility for nanoscale science serving over a thousand academic, industrial and government scientists around the world each year. Users come to the Foundry to perform multidisciplinary research beyond the scope of an individual’s own laboratory. The Molecular Foundry features world-class scientists with expertise across a broad range of disciplines and state-of-the-art, often one-of-a-kind, instrumentation. Staff spend at least half their time working with outside users, devoting the remainder of their time to internal research activities, which can be augmented with postdoctoral fellows hired using internal or external grant support. Internal research programs advance the frontiers of nanoscale science and electron microscopy by developing new capabilities that are made available to users. In this novel feedback model, users are strongly engaged to advance Foundry research: many new Foundry capabilities arise out of synergistic projects with users.