LSU is expanding its national research footprint through new formal partnerships with two of the U.S. Department of Energy’s most prominent national laboratories, positioning the university to play a larger role in energy, carbon management and critical minerals research.
LSU recently signed memorandums of understanding with Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, building on a similar agreement executed last March with Idaho National Laboratory, according to Robert Twilley, LSU’s vice president for research and economic development.
The agreements are part of a broader strategy to increase LSU’s competitiveness for federal research funding, particularly from the U.S. Department of Energy.
“When I started as vice president about three years ago, LSU was announcing our ambitions to be in the top 50 research universities,” Twilley says. “We took a close look at our research portfolio and noticed that we were below our peers in funding from the Department of Energy, which was surprising given that we’re an energy state.”
Twilley says the university’s geographic location and deep ties to industry give LSU a competitive advantage as a test bed for applied research.
“We started our national lab initiative, which was to build stronger linkages with the national labs, find out more about what their needs were, and what we as at LSU could provide,” Twilley says.
Under the agreements, LSU and the national laboratories will pursue faculty and postdoctoral exchanges, joint research proposals and expanded student internship pipelines.
LSU hopes to launch its first faculty exchanges with Argonne as early as August, according to Twilley. The university also plans to expand student placements at the labs, following early success at Idaho National Laboratory, where seven of 30 cybersecurity interns last year were LSU students.
Argonne’s work in critical minerals is of particular interest to LSU researchers, Twilley says, as Louisiana’s industrial waste streams contain valuable materials such as lithium and gallium that could be extracted and returned to the economy.
Oak Ridge brings strengths in carbon management and high-performance computing, while Idaho National Laboratory has collaborated with LSU on nuclear energy and cybersecurity tied to energy infrastructure.
LSU is also working toward a fourth agreement with the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh, focused on carbon sequestration and lower-emissions industrial production. A planned visit last fall was delayed by the federal government shutdown, but Twilley says the trip has been rescheduled for sometime in March, with hopes of signing an agreement by the end of the spring semester.
Twilley adds that the partnerships build on momentum from recent large-scale energy research wins, including the largest ever grant awarded by the U.S. National Science Foundation—totaling $160 million over 10 years to LSU FUEL—and reflect LSU’s broader effort to stack complementary initiatives into a stronger national research presence.
“It’s not just these signings,” he says. “These signings are a part of a bigger, winning environment that we’re building here around energy.”
