DOE NEWS
NEWS MEDIA CONTACT: FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE Jeff Sherwood,
202/586-5806 Tuesday, August
14, 2001
DOE Announces First Awards in Scientific
Discovery through Advanced
Computing Program (printable PDF version)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Energy (DOE)
today announced its first awards under the new Scientific Discovery through
Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program.
Fifty-one projects will receive a total of $57 million this fiscal year
to advance fundamental research in several areas related to the
department’s missions, including:
climate modeling, fusion energy sciences, chemical sciences, nuclear
astrophysics, high energy physics and high performance computing.
SciDAC is an integrated program that will help create
a new generation of scientific simulation codes. The codes will take full advantage of the extraordinary
computing capabilities of terascale computers (computers capable of doing
trillions of calculations per second) to address ever larger, more complex
problems. The program also
includes research on improved mathematical and computing systems software that
will allow these codes to use modern parallel computers effectively and
efficiently. Additionally, the
program will develop “collaboratory” software to enable geographically
separated scientists to effectively work together as a team, to control
scientific instruments remotely and to share data more readily.
"This innovative program will help us to find new
energy sources for the future, understand the effect of energy production on
our environment and learn more about the fundamental nature of energy and
matter," said Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham. "A major strength of many of the
projects is a partnership between scientists at the Energy Department’s
national laboratories and universities."
Selected from over 150 proposals, the SciDAC
activities include 23 large projects that will each receive $500,000 to $4
million per year for three to five years, and 27 smaller projects, each with
funding of up to $500,000 per year for three years.
"These projects represent a significant change in
the way we do computational research, with greater emphasis on integrated
teams,” said James Decker, acting director of the department’s
Office of Science. "Our
strategy is to support coordinated efforts by the scientists working to solve
complex problems in physics, chemistry and biology, and the applied
mathematicians and computer scientists working to develop the computational
tools required for that research.”
Success of the SciDAC program requires multi-disciplinary teams from
universities and laboratories to work in close partnership.
Thirty-three projects are in the biological, chemical
and physical sciences.
Specifically, 14 university projects will advance the science of climate
simulation and prediction. These
projects involve both novel methods and computationally efficient approaches
for simulating components of the climate system and work on the integrated
“climate model of the future.” Ten projects will address the areas of quantum chemistry and
fluid dynamics, which are critical for modeling energy-related chemical
transformations such as combustion, catalysis and photochemical energy conversion. The scientists involved in these activities
will develop new theoretical methods and efficient computational algorithms to
predict complex molecular structures and reaction rates with unprecedented
accuracy. Five projects are
focused on developing and improving the physics models needed for integrated
simulations of plasma systems to advance fusion energy science. These projects will focus on such
fundamental phenomena as electromagnetic wave-plasma interactions, plasma
turbulence and macroscopic stability of magnetically confined plasmas. Four projects in high energy and
nuclear physics will significantly extend our exploration of the fundamental
processes of nature. The projects
include the search for the explosion mechanism of core-collapse supernovae,
development of a new generation of accelerator simulation codes and simulations
of quantum chromodynamics (QCD).
Seventeen projects are to develop the software
infrastructure to support research collaboration using distributed resources
and scientific simulation on terascale computers. Three Applied Mathematics Integrated Software Infrastructure
Centers will take on the challenge of providing scalable numerical
libraries. Four Computer Science
Integrated Software Infrastructure Centers will address critical issues in high
performance component software technology, large scale scientific data
management, understanding application/architecture relationships for improved
sustained performance, and scalable system software tools for improved
management and utility of systems with thousands of processors. Four national collaboratory, two
middleware, and four network research projects will have general applicability
and will seek to research, develop, deploy and refine the underpinning software
environment that will enable innovative approaches to scientific computing
through secure remote access to shared distributed resources, large-scale
transfers over high-speed networks and integration of collaborative tools with
the researcher’s desktop.
The projects involve collaborations among 13 DOE
laboratories and more than 50 colleges, universities and companies. DOE laboratories receiving funds
are: Ames Laboratory; Argonne
National Laboratory; Brookhaven National Laboratory; Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Oak Ridge National Laboratory;
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory;
Sandia National Laboratories; Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; and Thomas
Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.
Universities and companies receiving funds are: Auburn University; Boston
University; California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Clemson University;
Colorado State University; Florida Atlantic University; Georgia Institute of
Technology; Indiana University; Iowa State University; Massachusetts Institute
of Technology; Michigan State University; New York University; North Carolina
State University; Northwestern University; Ohio State University; Oklahoma
State University; Old Dominion University; Princeton University;
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;
Rice University; Rollins College; Rutgers University; Scripps Institute (UCSD);
Stanford University; State University New York at Stony Brook; Stevens
Institute of Technology; University Corporation for Atmospheric Research;
University of Arizona; University of California-Berkeley; University of
California-Davis; University of California-San Diego; University of
California-Santa Barbara; University of California-Santa Cruz; University of
California-Los Angeles;University of Chicago; University of Colorado; University of Delaware; University of Georgia;
University of Illinois; University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana; University of
Iowa; University of Maryland; University of Michigan; University of North
Carolina; University of Quebec (Canada); University of Southern California;
University of Tennessee; University of Texas at Austin; University of Utah;
University of Washington; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Utah State
University; Wellesley College; General Atomics; Comp X; Lodestar, and Tech X.
For a complete list of SciDAC awards, principal
investigators and project descriptions, see:
http://www.sc.doe.gov/
-DOE-
R-01-143