The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has chosen nine universities to take part in a program designed to promote science-based modeling and simulation. The participants will develop centers for the Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program (PSAAP), splitting a combined $107.5 million to support research and innovation activities.
The PSAAP centers will prioritize a set of critical technical areas while conducting research and technology development projects. These include:
- Discipline-focused research needed to further predictive science and enabled by effective Exascale computing technologies.
- Developing and demonstrating technologies and methodologies to support effective Exascale computing in the context of science/engineering applications.
- State-of-the-art machine learning and data science technologies for predictive science and engineering.
- Predictive Science-based on verification and validation and uncertainty quantification (V&V/UQ) for large-scale simulations.
- Workforce development of the next-generation computational scientists and engineers.
The universities will either operate as a Predictive Simulation Center (PSC) or as a Focused Investigatory Center (FIC), prioritizing different focus sectors depending on their classification.
PSCs will prioritize creating scalable application simulations that address large-scale, integrated multidisciplinary issues. The universities will evenly split $87.5 million to develop and apply computer science technologies and approaches centered around Exascale computing and demonstrate predictive simulation with uncertainty quantification. The chosen PSCs include:
- The University of Florida – Center for Multiscale Modeling of Multiphase Combustion.
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Center for the Exascale Simulation of Coupled High Enthalpy Fluid-Solid Interactions.
- The University of Michigan – Center for AI-enabled Exascale Prediction of Long-time Events in Multimaterial Shock-assisted Chemical Reactions.
- Oregon State University – Center for Advancing the Radiation Resilience of Electronics.
- University of Virginia – Center for Stochastic Simulations of Ablative Geometries with Error-Learning in Space and Time.
FICs will be involved in more tightly focused research activities. These institutions will spend a combined $20 million to oversee specific research topics in either a science or engineering discipline or an Exascale enabling technology. All activities must prioritize solutions related to NNSA’s efforts to strengthen national security and achieve vital breakthroughs in large-scale simulation science. Participating FICs include:
- Brown University – Center for Information Geometric Mechanics and Optimization.
- The University of California at San Diego – Center for Simulation and design of Heterogeneous Architectures for Performance and Energy absorption.
- Michigan State University – High Order Plasma Turbulence Modeling for Z-Pinch.
- The University of New Mexico – Center for Optimized Modern Parallel Adaptive System Software.
The NNSA’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program will conduct program oversight for all institutions. The program will support efforts to streamline the annual stockpile assessment and certification process, study advanced nuclear weapons design and manufacturing processes, analyze accident scenarios and weapons aging and create tools to help stockpile Life Extension Programs and resolve Significant Finding Investigations.
Photo by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, from Wikimedia Commons
