The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $28 million in funding for five research projects to develop software that will fully unleash the potential of DOE supercomputers to make new leaps in fields such as quantum information science and chemical reactions for clean energy applications.
"DOE's national labs are home to some of the world's fastest supercomputers, and with more advanced software programs we can fully harness the power of these supercomputers to make breakthrough discoveries and solve the world's hardest to crack problems," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. "These investments will help sustain U.S. leadership in science, accelerate basic research in energy, and advance solutions to the nation's clean energy priorities."
Supercomputers are essential in today's world to addressing scientific topics of national interest, including clean energy, new materials, climate change, the origins of the universe, and the nature of matter.
These awards, made through DOE's Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program, bring together experts in key areas of science and energy research, applied mathematics, and computer science to address computing challenges and take maximum advantage of DOE's supercomputers, allowing them to quicken the pace of scientific discovery.
The five selected projects will focus on computational methods, algorithms and software to further chemical and materials research, specifically for simulating quantum phenomena and chemical reactions. Teams will partner with either or both SciDAC Institutes – FASTMath and RAPIDS2 – led by Lawrence Berkeley and Argonne National Laboratories. A list of projects can be found here.
The projects are sponsored by the Offices of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) and Basic Energy Sciences (BES) within the Department's Office of Science through the SciDAC program. Projects were chosen by competitive peer review under a DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement open to universities, national laboratories, and other research organizations. The final details for each project award are subject to negotiations between DOE and the awardees.
Funding totals approximately $28 million, including $7 million in Fiscal Year 2021 dollars with outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations.