April 27, 2021 — PRACE announced that its 22nd Call for Proposals for PRACE Project Access received 61 eligible proposals, of which 43 were awarded, a total of 1.92 billion core hours. This brings the total number of Project Access projects awarded to 873 since 2010. Taking into account the seven multi-year proposals from calls 18 and 20, and the 11.3 million core hours reserved for Centres of Excellence, the total amount of computing time awarded by PRACE to date has reached approximately 30 billion core hours.
The proposals awarded under the 22nd call are led by principal investigators from 14 different countries, including a proposal submitted from Saudi Arabia. International collaboration is significantly supported through the awarded proposals as these involve team members collaboration from a number of countries that include China, Saudi Arabia, Australia, USA and many more.
Among the awarded proposals, seven scientific domains are represented: 6 proposals are linked to the fields of Biochemistry, Bioinformatics and Life Sciences; 21 to Chemical Sciences and Materials; 3 to Earth System Sciences; 3 to Engineering; 8 to Fundamental Constituents of Matter; 1 to Mathematics and Computer Sciences, and 1 to Universe Sciences.
Four projects are awarded under the “Industry Access Track” that was introduced for the first time in the 19th PRACE Call. The “Industry Access Track” prioritises 10% of the total resources for proposals with Principal Investigators affiliated in industry.
The 22nd call was the first call to introduce the new Peer-Review Platform which is being developed as an in-house software to manage the complete Peer-Review evaluation process.
Details of several awarded proposals are highlighted below:
Nuclear Physics from the Standard Model was awarded 121 million core hours on Marconi100 at CINECA (Italy). The project will be led by Prof. Assumpta Parreño from the University of Barcelona, Spain. The research team intends to use Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics calculations to show how nuclei emerge from the intricacies of Standard Model dynamics.
Computational investigations of electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction towards high value products was awarded 37 million core hours on JUWELS Cluster at GCS/JSC (Germany). This project will be led by Prof. Karen Chan from the Technical University of Denmark, and has been accepted as a multi-year (3 years) project. This project will provide an in-depth fundamental and mechanistic understanding of the reaction processes critical to a sustainable carbon cycle and to guide the rational design of highly active electrocatalysts.
Hydrogen to Leverage Ultra-Lean Combustion in Internal Combustion Engines was awarded 5.3 million core hours on Joliot-Curie Rome and 9.7 million core hours on Joliot-Curie SKL at GENCI/CEA (France). The project was awarded under the Industry Track and will be led by Dr. Frédéric Ravet from Renault, France. The project intends to tackle the improvement of the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) by running kinetically detailed Large Eddy Simulations (LES) to study the complex unsteady phenomena in real engines.
WateR lUBrIcated chaNnel (RUBIN) was awarded on 101.9 million core hours on HAWK at GCS/HLRS (Germany). The project will be led by Dr. Alessio Roccon from Vienna University of Technology, Austria. Innovative approaches based on direct numerical simulations will be used to tackle the natural tendency of water to migrate towards the wall and thus to lubricate the flow.
Long large-eddy-simulations of magnetized binary neutron star mergers: from the turbulent regime to the creation of large-scale magnetic fields was awarded 43.5 million core hours on MareNostrum at BSC (Spain). The project will be led by Dr. Carlos Palenzuela from the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain. The basis of the project is to study the full dynamics of magnetised binary neutron star mergers through extremely accurate numerical simulations, focusing on the physical mechanisms that are relevant for the formation of detectable electromagnetic signals. To help carry out the project, a High-Level support Team (HLST) has also been assigned.
ModFil – Modulating the structure and dynamics of bacterial filaments was awarded 107.6 million core hours on Piz Daint at ETH Zurich/CSCS (Switzerland). The project intends to continue research done in previous PRACE awarded projects, focusing on the design and testing, in silico and experimentally, of several small molecules and mutations that can interfere with the function of fibres type-4 pilus (T4P) and type-2 secretion system pseudopilus (T2SS-Ps). Dr. Massimiliano Bonomi from the Pasteur Institute – CNRS will lead the project.
RadLepHdec – Electromagnetic corrections to leptonic D- and B-meson decay rates in LQCD was awarded 46 million core hours on SuperMUC-NG at GCS/LRZ (Germany). Prof. Christoph Lehner from the University of Regensburg, Germany will lead the project. The aim of the project is to compute the form factors contributing to the amplitudes for the radiative leptonic weak decays of D(Ds) and B(Bs) mesons leading to significantly improved precision in the determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements.
All information and the abstracts of the projects awarded under the 22nd PRACE Call for Proposals is available on the PRACE website.
The 22nd Call for Proposals for PRACE Project Access (Tier-0) was open from 1 September 2020 until 27 October 2020. Selected proposals will receive allocations to PRACE resources from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022. The 23rd Call for Proposals for PRACE Project Access (Tier-0) is open from 23 March 2021 to 27 April 2021, 10:00 CEST, see here: https://prace-ri.eu/call/prace-23rd-call-for-proposals-for-project-access/