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High-Impact Science at Scale Program

NERSC's High-Impact Science at Scale program provides competitively selected projects an allocation of time to use NERSC's unique capabilities to deliver high-impact science. Selected projects use NERSC resources at scale to investigate key science problems that they would not otherwise be able to address. Teams were selected following Calls for Proposals, in which responses were reviewed for the ability to scale well on Cori KNL nodes, potential to deliver a significant science result, a reasonable ratio of feasibility to risk, and the appropriateness of approach and resources requested. 

2022 Projects

The High-Impact Science at Scale program for 2022 is devoted to QIS@Perlmutter.

2021 Projects

The High-Impact Science program for 2021 continued support for COVID-19-related research and exascale application development related to the Exascale Computing Project.

2020 Projects

The High-Impact Science program for 2020 was dedicated to COVID-19-related research.

2019 Projects

Principal Investigator Organization Project Title
David Trebotich Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory  Multiphase Flow in Shale
Jun Li UC San Diego Hot electron scaling and energy coupling in nonlinear laser plasma interactions
Yu Feng Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Simulating the DESI, LSST and CMB-S4 Universe
Myongkyu Lee Sandia National Laboratory DSMC for nonequilibrium thermal and chemical reaction
Jacqueline Chen Sandia National Laboratory Direct Numerical Simulation of Multi-Injection Mixing and Combustion at Compression Ignition Engine Conditions
Lorenzo Sironi  Columbia University The seeds of a magnetic Universe
Ben Kirtman  University of Miami E3SM decadal prediction experiment
Vikram Gavini  University of Michigan Electronic structure studies on energetics of pyramidal dislocations in Mg
Martin White  UC Berkeley Simulating the DESI, LSST and the CMB-S4 Universe
Ivan Oleynik University of South Florida Predictive Simulations of Dynamic Compression of Carbon Materials
Mohammad-Reza Alam UC Berkeley Wave Carpet Shape Optimization using Genetic Algorithm and Neural Network
David Schlegel Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Producing the Final Data Release of the DESI imaging Legacy Survey

2018 Projects

Principal Investigator Organization Project Title
Edward Baron U. Oklahoma Scaling and I/O in the Largest 3D Radiative Transfer Calculation of the Solar Photosphere and Chromosphere
Gil Compo U. Colorado / CIRES Ocean Atmosphere Reanalyses for Climate Applications (OARCA) 1815-2017
Yu Feng Berkeley Lab  Simulating the DESI, LSST and CMB-S4 Universe
Fan Guo Los Alamos Lab  3D Kinetic Simulations of Nonthermal Particle Acceleration in Flaring Magnetic Reconnection
Yanfei Jiang UC Santa Barbara Global 3D Radiation Hydrodynamic Simulations of Mass Loss from Wolf-Rayet Stars
Valentin Karasev  U. Rochester Density functional theory calculations of the transport properties in the high energy density regime
Lai-Yung Ruby Leung Pacific NW National Lab Ultra-high resolution atmospheric simulations of water cycle processes and extremes
Jun Li UC San Diego Hot electron scaling and energy coupling in nonlinear laser plasma interactions
Noa Marom Carnegie Mellon Computational discovery of singlet fission materials
Noa Marom Carnegie Mellon Data driven discovery of singlet fission materials
Alan Stanier Los Alamos Lab Probing the physics of magnetic reconnection: from fusion energy to space plasmas
Ben Timmermans Berkeley Lab Multi-resolution surrogate modeling for simulated climate extremes and event attribution studies
David Trebotich Berkeley Lab Chombo-crunch: extreme scale simulation of flow and transport in heterogeneous media
Xiao Wang Harvard Medical School Consensus Equilibrium Method for Extreme-Scale CT Image Reconstruction

2017 Projects

The following projects were awarded time through the program, which allocated a total of about 450 million NERSC Hours.

Principal Investigator Organization Project Title Maximum Job Scale NERSC Hours Used in 2017
 Christine Goulet USC Earthquake Center M8 Earthquake on the San Andreas Fault (deferred to 2018) (deferred to 2018)
 Katrin Heitmann Argonne National Laboratory Knowhere (Cosmology) 6,144 nodes
(418 K cores)
57 million
 Frithjof Karsch Brookhaven National Laboratory Net strangeness and net electric charge fluctuations in strong-interacting matter  2,947 nodes
(200 K cores)
 42 million
 Steven Louie UC Berkeley Ab initio quasiparticle and optical properties of materials at scale

 6,656 nodes
(453 K cores)

 57 million
 Zarija Lukic Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory  Physical model of the intergalactic medium  1,024 nodes
(70 K cores)
 51 million
 Adam Stanier Los Alamos National Laboratory Probing the physics of magnetic reconnection – from fusion energy to space plasmas  2,048 nodes
(139 K cores)
 64 million
 David Trebotich Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Chombo-Crunch: Extreme scale simulation of flow and transport in heterogeneous media  8,400 nodes
(571 K cores)
 143 million
 Jean-Luc Vay Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory High-resolution 3D studies of asymmetric effects in the BELLA plasma accelerator experiments  1,274 nodes
(87 K cores)
 28 million