Computing Research Policy Blog

DoE Announces New Funding for Computational Science Projects

The Department of Energy announced new funding for computational science projects over the next three to five years. The press release describes the projects as "aimed at accelerating research in designing new materials, developing future energy sources, studying global climate change, improving environmental cleanup methods and understanding physics from the tiniest particles to the massive explosions of supernovae." The new projects will be sponsored by the DoE's Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program and will be called SciDAC-2. These projects will rely heavily on high performance computing.

The announcement states:

In support of these scientific applications, approximately $24.3 million in annual awards will allow SciDAC-2 to establish nine Centers for Enabling Technologies. Multidisciplinary teams will be led by national laboratories and universities and will focus on meeting the specific needs of SciDAC science applications researchers as they move toward petascale computing. The centers will specialize in applied mathematics, computer science, distributed computing or visualization and will be closely tied to specific science applications.

SciDAC-2 will also increase the presence of the program in the academic community by creating four university-led SciDAC institutes with thirteen participating universities. The institutes will receive approximately $8.2 million in awards annually. Through hands-on workshops and tutorials, the SciDAC institutes will help a broad range of researchers prepare their applications to take advantage of the increasing capabilities of supercomputing centers around the country as well as help foster the next generation of computational scientists.

Information on all of the programs and Centers can be found at SciDAC.