About Us
Whether running trillions of calculations on a supercomputer or visualizing and analyzing massive datasets, scientists today rely on advances in computer science, mathematics, and computational science, as well as large-scale computing and networking facilities, to increase our understanding of ourselves, our planet, and our universe. Berkeley Lab's Computing Sciences organization researches, develops, and deploys new tools and technologies to meet these needs and to advance research in such areas as global climate change, combustion, fusion energy, nanotechnology, biology, and astrophysics.
The Computing Sciences organization was created to advance computational science throughout the Department of Energy's Office of Science research programs. Our most significant strength is that in one organization, we have experienced staff with a wide range of expertise in computer hardware and software, computational science, applied mathematics, networking and middleware — and who specialize in applying their skills to solve scientific problems and provide services to the nationwide research community.
Computing Sciences carries out its mission by operating two national user facilities — NERSC and ESnet — and by conducting applied research and development in computer science, computational science, and applied mathematics — the three essential elements of computational modeling and simulation. We also sponsor the Luis W. Alvarez Postdoctoral Fellowship in Computational Science and participate in the DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship program and the Cal CSE program.
Combining computer and network operations with research and development in a single organization provides tangible benefits for the scientists who use our systems and for the advancement of the research programs. Just as our R&D programs benefit science, the needs of scientists influence the direction of our research. These two sides of Computing Sciences' work — systems and services, and research and development — are more than complementary: each enhances the quality of the other, as can be seen in a sampling of our achievements.
As shown on the organization chart, Computing Sciences consists of two divisions — the Computational Research Division (CRD) and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center Division. The Computing Sciences organization was created in 1996 and currently has about 200 employees. Most of the computational research and resources provided by Computing Sciences are funded by the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program in the DOE Office of Science.
