The Department of Energy announced on October 8, 2026 that it is awarding $96 million to 67 early-career scientists in 26 states through its 2026 Early Career Research Program. The recipients work at 39 universities and 11 national laboratories and user facilities, and the money is aimed at research in artificial intelligence, fusion energy and quantum science.
Darío Gil, the department’s Under Secretary for Science, framed the awards as an investment in people rather than projects. “Groundbreaking science begins with empowering extraordinary people,” Gil said, adding that the 67 researchers “represent the very best of American ingenuity.” The program is aimed at researchers at the start of their independent careers, a stage when a multiyear grant can decide whether a laboratory gets built and whether graduate students and postdoctoral researchers can be hired at all.
What a five-year Early Career Research Program award pays for
The Office of Science runs the program as a competitive grant, and the department’s announcement sets two award sizes. Scientists at universities and other institutions of higher education receive about $875,000 spread over five years, while scientists at DOE national laboratories or Office of Science user facilities receive about $2.75 million over the same period. The larger laboratory figure reflects the cost of staffing and running research inside a federal facility, so the two numbers are not directly comparable. The $96 million is the combined total for all 67 selections, not a per-award amount, and each award is paid out over five years rather than in a single payment, which means the annual budget for a university researcher is a fraction of the $96 million total.
The funding is tied to fiscal year 2026. The department’s call for the 2026 program described up to $145 million in total planned funding, of which $79 million was designated for fiscal year 2026, with later years depending on congressional appropriations. Since 2010 the program has made 1,238 awards, 797 to university researchers and 441 to national laboratory researchers, according to the announcement.
How early-career applicants were screened and selected
Eligibility was narrow by design. Applicants had to be untenured, tenure-track assistant or associate professors at a U.S. academic institution, or full-time employees at a national laboratory or Office of Science user facility, and in both cases had to have earned a doctorate within the previous 10 years. Pre-applications were mandatory and due March 24, 2026, and only applicants the department encouraged to proceed could submit full applications, which were due June 2, 2026. Awards are made competitively through peer review.
The word “selected” carries a caveat the announcement states plainly. A selection is for award negotiations, not a commitment to issue an award or provide funding, and the department may cancel negotiations and rescind a selection for any reason during that process. The distinction matters for the total: $96 million describes the amount selected for negotiation across the cohort, and final award amounts are settled between the department and each applicant. Readers following a particular researcher or campus should treat the announcement as the start of that negotiation rather than the end.
Artificial intelligence, fusion and quantum: the research areas
The announcement says the awards support research “critical to America’s scientific and technological leadership,” and it names three fields: artificial intelligence, which the release frames as Super Intelligence, fusion energy, and quantum science. It also presents the awards as advancing the executive order titled Restoring Gold Standard Science. The three named fields sit on top of a broader structure, because applicants compete within one of the Office of Science’s seven program offices.
Those offices are Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Biological and Environmental Research, Basic Energy Sciences, Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Isotope R&D and Production. A proposal therefore has to fit the programmatic priorities of one of those offices, which is why the cohort spans computing, plasma physics and materials rather than a single discipline. Trade coverage of the results appeared at HPCwire.
The 26 states on the award list
The announcement itself gives only the count of states, but the Office of Science’s awards list posted October 8, 2026 identifies the recipients by institution. The 26 states represented are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
California, Illinois and Texas account for the largest shares of the list. The institutions range from research universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Duke University and the University of Texas at Austin to smaller recipients such as the University of North Dakota, along with laboratories including Argonne, Oak Ridge, Brookhaven and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. For readers checking their own state, the awards list is the document to consult, since it pairs each award with its institution. The department ran a comparable call for fiscal year 2025 as well.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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