2004 INCITE Projects

In December 2003, for the first year of INCITE awards, the DOE Office of Science selected three computational science projects to receive a total of 4.9 million hours of supercomputing time at the NERSC Center — 10 percent of the total computing time available this year on NERSC's Seaborg system. The projects are expected to significantly advance our understanding of the makeup of the universe, the chemical process by which plants convert sunlight to energy while removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and the turbulent forces that affect everything from weather to industrial processes.

Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) is a competitive program designed to support a small number of computationally intensive, large-scale research projects that can make high-impact scientific advances through the use of a substantial allocation of computer time and data storage at the NERSC Center. The INCITE program specifically encourages proposals from universities and other research institutions.

The three projects selected by the INCITE review team are:

• William Lester: Quantum Monte Carlo Study of Photoprotection via Carotenoids in Photosynthetic Centers
• Tomasz Plewa: Thermonuclear Supernovae: Stellar Explosions in Three Dimensions
  
• P. K. Yeung: Fluid Turbulence and Mixing at High Reynolds Number
  
  

SC2004 INCITE presentations (PDF format):

• Thermonuclear Supernovae: Stellar Explosions in Three Dimensions (Tomek Plewa et al.) [pps]
• Quantum Monte Carlo Study of Photoprotection in Photosynthesis (William Lester et al.)
• Fluid Turbulence and Mixing at High Reynolds Number (P. K. Yeung and Diego Donzis)

2004 NERSC Annual Report articles (PDF format):

• Follow the energy: Simulations are unraveling the details of energy transfer in photosynthesis
• Behind the big flash: Calculations reveal new explanation of supernova explosions
• Creation of the whorled: Computations probe the subtle principles governing turbulence