DOE’s Office of Science Seeks Proposals for Expanded Large-Scale Scientific Computing

WASHINGTON, DC – Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman announced today that DOE’s Office of Science is seeking proposals to support innovative, large-scale computational science projects to enable high-impact advances through the use of advanced computers not commonly available in academia or the private sector. Projects currently funded are helping to reduce engine pollution and to improve our understanding of the stars and solar systems and human genetics. Successful proposers will be given the use of substantial computer time and data storage at the department’s scientific computing centers in Berkeley, Calif.; Argonne, Ill.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and Richland, Wash.

“Advanced scientific computing is critical to DOE’s missions,” said Secretary Bodman. “Scientific computing is essential to simulating and predicting the behavior of nuclear weapons and accelerating the development of new energy technologies.”

“This unique program opens up the world of high-performance computing to a broad array of new scientific users,” Bodman said. “Through the use of these advanced systems, scientists have made important progress in several grand challenge research areas, including combustion, astrophysics, protein structure, chemistry and engineering.”

The Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program seeks computationally intensive, large-scale research projects. The program encourages proposals from universities, other research institutions and industry. Industry is specifically solicited to propose challenging problems that may be solved using high- performance computing systems. The Office of Science expects to make a small number of large awards. In 2004, three projects were selected from the 23 proposals submitted.

“The INCITE program has surpassed all expectations over the last two years,” Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Director of DOE’s Office of Science, said. “To encourage broader participation in INCITE, we have expanded the program this year to include more of the Office of Science's high-end computing resources, allow for multi-year awards, and consider proprietary research proposals. The INCITE program also provides opportunities for industry to use high-end computing as supported by the Council on Competitiveness.We are providing more hours on different high-end computing architectures so that a wider range of problems can be explored.”

Now in its third year, the INCITE program has been expanded to include high-end computing resources from four of DOE’s national laboratories. Scientists from the national and international research community will be able to request allocations on the Cray Leadership-Class computers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the HP-MPP system at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the IBM Power 3 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and the IBM BlueGene system at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL).

In support of this program, the Office of Science has committed 10 percent of its high-end computing resources at LBNL, ORNL and ANL, and five percent of the high-end computing resources at PNNL.

INCITE proposals will be peer reviewed both in the area of proposed research and also for general scientific merit, comparing them with proposals in other disciplines. Current Department of Energy sponsorship is not required for this program. DOE plans to announce the awards this fall. The Call for Proposals is available at http://hpc.science.doe.gov/.

The three computational science projects selected in the INCITE program’s second year to receive a total of 6.5 million hours of supercomputing time at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at LBNL were:

• “Direct Numerical Simulation of Turbulent Non-Premixed Combustion – Fundamental Insights towards Predictive Modeling,” led by Jacqueline Chen Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California, which was awarded 2.5 million processor-hours and is expected to increase our understanding on ways to reduce pollution from combustion engines.
• “Magneto-Rotational Instability and Turbulent Angular Momentum Transport,” led by Fausto Cattaneo, University of Chicago, which was awarded 2 million processor-hours and promises to offer insights into how stars and solar systems form.
• “Molecular Dynameomics” led by Valerie Daggett of the University of Washington, which was awarded 2 million processor-hours to study how proteins express genetic information.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the nation and ensures U.S. world leadership across a broad range of scientific disciplines. For more information about the Office of Science, go to www.science.energy.gov.