STATUS
Notice 01-06 - Published Dec. 19, 2000
Notice 01-07 - Published Dec. 19, 2000
Notice 01-08 - Published Jan. 11, 2001
Notice 01-09 - Published Jan. 2, 2001
Notice 01-10 - Published Jan. 3, 2001
Notice 01-11 - Published Jan. 22, 2001

The Office of Science (SC) expects to publish in the Federal Register a set of solicitations for new research by early January 2001. These will be separate but related solicitations involving the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Biological and Environmental Research (BER), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES), and High Energy and Nuclear Physics (HENP) under the umbrella of SC's newly funded research program, Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing.

It is anticipated that up to $25 million will be available for multiple awards in FY�2001. We expect that teams of multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional researchers will be required to explore and solve the challenging problems in scientific computing identified in the solicitations. In line with the recommendations of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee's 1999 report, applicants may request support for up to five years, but out-year support is contingent on availability of funds, progress of the funded activity, and programmatic needs.

The deadline for submitting applications is expected to be approximately ten (10) weeks after the solicitation is published. We expect to ask applicants to submit a preapplication containing a title, a list of investigators and their institutions, and a no-more-than-two page summary of the proposed research. Preapplications will be due approximately four (4) weeks after the solicitation is published. Feedback on the preapplications will be provided within two weeks of their receipt.

The goal of Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing is to enable the use of terascale computers to dramatically extend our exploration of the fundamental processes of nature as well as advance our ability to predict the behavior of a broad range of complex natural and engineered systems. This will be achieved by creating a Scientific Computing Software Infrastructure to bridge the gap between the most advanced computing technologies available and the scientific research programs of the Office of Science. The solicitations from the individual offices are expected to contain a call for research applications in some or all of the areas listed below.

1. Research in and development of computational modeling and simulation capabilities that take full advantage of the extraordinary computing capabilities provided by terascale computers and advance, as no other approach can, the fundamental science programs of the DOE:

a) Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Solicitation Notice 01-08)

• Understanding and predicting the energetics and dynamics of chemical reactions and the interactions between chemistry and fluid dynamics relevant to but not limited to combustion, environmental fate and transport, surface mediated catalysis, and chemical processing.
  
• Understanding and predicting chemical reactivity unique to the nanoscale phenomena that drive such processes as catalysis and chemical vapor deposition.
  

b) Office of Biological and Environmental Research (Solicitation Notice 01-09)

• Predicting the earth's climate at both regional and global scales for decades to centuries, including levels of certainty and uncertainty.
  

c) Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (Solicitation Notice 01-10)

• Understanding macroscopic stability and microscopic turbulence, including their effect on core and edge confinement, in magnetically confined plasmas.
  
• Understanding basic plasma science topics such as electromagnetic wave/particle interactions and magnetic reconnection.
  
• Understanding the physics required for inertial fusion energy applications, for example, that associated with electromagnetic fields and beam dynamics in heavy ion accelerators.
  

d) Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics (Solicitation Notice 01-11)

• Predicting electromagnetic field and beam dynamics in particle accelerators, with particular attention to processes, such as beam halos, that impact the performance of current and proposed high-energy accelerators.
  
• Predicting the physical phenomena encompassed in the Standard Model of Particle Physics to determine whether additional theoretical concepts are needed to explain fundamental interactions at very high energies or short distances.
  
• Predicting the structure of nuclei as well as nuclear processes involved in energetic events such as stellar supernovae explosions.
  

It is anticipated that up to $10 million will be available in these areas and that this funding, in order to address problems of the complexity anticipated, would support on the order of 6-8 research teams of disciplinary theoretical and computational scientists, computer scientists, and applied mathematicians.

2. Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (Solicitation Notices 01-06 and 01-07)

a) Research and development of software to accelerate the creation of scientific codes that take full advantage of terascale and beyond computers, protect the long-term investments in these codes, and enable a broad range of scientists to use simulation in their research:

• Basic mathematical methods, algorithms and libraries that scale to thousands and tens of thousands of processors.
  
• Code development environments and tools to enable the development of complex, scientific simulation codes.
  
• Disciplinary problem-solving environments to enable the use of computational modeling and simulation by a broad range of scientists.
  
• Scientific data management and analysis (visualization) systems to enable the extraction of knowledge from the massive data sets (100s of terabytes to petabytes) produced by advanced scientific simulations.
  
• Scalable operating system software and tools for management of terascale and beyond computer systems, including resource management, scheduling, and high performance messaging.
  

b) Research and development of collaboratory and networking software to link geographically separated researchers, facilitate access to and movement of large (100s of terabytes to petabytes) data sets, and ensure that all qualified scientists can fully participate in the activities described above.

• Distributed computing environments and tools to support use of remote computers and access to data and facilities, and to facilitate remote collaborations.
  
• Collaboratory software to enable integration of multi-institutional, geographically-dispersed researchers into effective, efficient teams.
  

In many instances the activities in 2) will be targeted at the solution of problems in specific scientific areas, e.g., mathematical methods, algorithms, and libraries for climate modeling; data management and analysis for computational biology; or a distributed computing environment to support experimental work at high-energy physics accelerators. In other instances, these activities may focus on the solution of problems that crosscut a number of scientific areas. In all cases, it will be important to establish close interactions with the affected scientific areas. It is anticipated that up to $15 million will be available to fund 4-6 multidisciplinary research teams in the above areas.

Research and development activities proposed in response to the above solicitations must contribute in a clear and compelling way to the creation of the Scientific Computing Software Infrastructure as outlined in Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing. Awardees will become part of the overall team focused on the development of the Software Infrastructure and to participate in periodic team meetings.

Copies of the SC computing plan, Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing, can be downloaded from the SC website at: http://www.science.doe.gov/production/octr/mics/mics_documents.htm

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Once the above referenced notices are published in the Federal Register, they will also be available at the Office of Science Grants and Contracts Web Site at http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html. A Notice of Intent has also been posted at this web site announcing upcoming SciDAC Program Announcements to the DOE National Laboratories.