Proposal Submission Information

The ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) is an allocation program for projects of interest to the Department of Energy (DOE), with an emphasis on high-risk, high-payoff HPC simulations in areas directly related to the DOE mission, that respond to national emergencies, or that broaden the community of researchers capable of using leadership computing resources.

ALCC is currently soliciting proposals for allocation awards for the 2025-2026 allocation year. High performance computing (HPC) machines available for the current allocation cycle include Frontier, the new exascale system at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Aurora, the new exascale system at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF); Polaris, the 44-petaflop accelerated system at ALCF; and Perlmutter, an accelerated system at National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. 10% to 30% of the allocatable computing time will be made available on each of these machines to the ALCC program.

Proposal Submission Instructions

All proposals must be submitted electronically via the ALCC submission site.

Electronic applications will be accepted starting Monday, December 23, 2024, through 8:00 pm EDT on Monday, February 10, 2024.

Pre-Proposal Content:

  1. Team and Contacts
  2. HPC Resource Request
  3. Previous Allocation History
  4. Security Questionnaire
  5. Project Support
  6. Prohibited Reviewers
  7. Executive Summary

Proposal Content:

  1. ALCC Related Publications

Provide a list of publications resulting from previous ALCC awards to this project team for work related to the proposal under consideration. Only those publications that include acknowledgement to ALCC and/or ASCR computing systems (OLCF, ALCF, or NERSC) may be included. This list may not be used in lieu of references in the project narrative. Citations should follow the ALCC citation template.

  1. Project Narrative

This section is a PDF upload. Please use the provided Project Narrative Template. The project Narrative should not exceed 15 pages. Proposals whose Project Narrative exceeds the 15 page limit will be deemed unresponsive and may not undergo merit review.

The Project Narrative should include:

  • Significance of Research including research goals, impact, relevance to the DOE mission, relation to other projects, and anticipated results.
  • Research Objectives including goals, strategy, and dissemination of results.
  • Computational Usage Plan including computational approach, milestone table, and data management plan.
  • References

  1. Prohibited Content Agreement

  1. Team Description and Administration Details

This section is a PDF upload. Please use the provided Team Description & Administrative Details template.

Please describe what personnel are already in place and their roles in this project. If applicable, describe any personnel that will be hired for the project in the future and their responsibilities. Include any potential personnel turnover that may occur during the project and a replacement strategy.

The project’s leadership is assumed to be the PI and Co-PI(s). Describe how decisions will be made to allocate time to individuals or, for Consortium/End-Station proposals (proposals with multiple collaborating teams), subgroups within the project. Describe the focus of each individual or subgroup. Successful proposals will include sufficient details to convey to reviewers the interrelationship between individuals or subgroups and how the sum of the parts will lead to scientific discovery or engineering solutions supporting the overarching goal of the project.

  1. Bio-sketches

This section is a PDF upload. Please use the provided Bio-sketches template. Bio-sketches should be limited to two-pages per person. Contents should include education, employment, five publications most relevant to the proposed project, research interests and expertise, synergistic activities, and collaborators for the past five years.

Do NOT include prohibited personal identifiable information (PII) such as home address.

Proposal Evaluation

Proposals are internally reviewed by DOE Program Mangers and externally reviewed by science domain experts and HPC experts to determine scientific merit, responsiveness to the DOE mission, and ability to broaden the HPC community. Proposals are selected for allocation based off reviewer comments and agency/office priorities.

Questions about can be directed to: [email protected]

Proposal decisions will be communicated by Friday, May 30, 2025.