DOE: $35M for Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing Partnership in Nuclear Physics

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Sept. 6, 2022 — Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $35 million for three joint projects in Nuclear Physics (NP) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) via a partnership program of Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC). The NP SciDAC program brings together experts in nuclear physics research with experts in software development, applied mathematics, and computer science to take maximum advantage of high-performance computing resources.

The total funding is $35 million for three projects lasting five years, with $7.2 million in Fiscal Year 2022 and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations. A list of projects can be found here.

“The SciDAC partnership projects deploy high-performance computing and enable world-leading science discoveries in our nuclear physics facilities,” said Timothy Hallman, Associate Director of Science for Nuclear Physics. “For example, the Femto-scale imaging of the nucleons will bring transformational knowledge of the nucleon structure and revolutionize the understanding of nuclear matter.”

The selected projects will significantly advance the understanding of nuclei properties and nuclear reactions, perform three-dimensional imaging of nucleons, probe the existence of exotic states of quarks and gluons, unravel basic constituents of matter, and explore the origin of the mass of visible matter. The projects will develop new algorithms and software, employing artificial intelligence and machine learning, to address these fundamental challenges in nuclear research. These projects will move the frontier of strong interaction and electroweak nuclear physics towards precise and quantitative predictions.

The projects will be conducted by collaborative teams led by national laboratories. Seventeen universities and national labs received awards. The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement for “Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC): Partnership in Nuclear Physics.”