Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing
The U.S. Department of Energy's Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program brings together the nation's top researchers to tackle challenging scientific problems. The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research in DOE's Office of Science supports multidisciplinary SciDAC projects aimed at developing future energy sources, studying global climate change, accelerating research in designing new materials,improving environmental cleanup methods, and understanding physics from the tiniest particles to massive supernovae explosions.

Extreme Scale Workshops The summary report from the Nuclear Energy Sciences workshop "Science Based Nuclear Energy Systems Enabled by Advanced Modeling and Simulation at the Extreme Scale" is now posted, along with presentations and reports from the previous Climate, High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics and Fusion Energy workshops. Links to other workshops in the series. Presentations are posted from SciDAC 2009 held June 14-18, 2009. news and notes archive

SciDAC Review Issue 13 (Summer) now available online The Summer Issue (#13) of SciDAC Review includes an interview with Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov, Director of the Office of Research and Development for National Security Science and Technology. Feature stories include laser plasma particle accelerators, computational epidemiology for pandemic response planning.    PETSc named to R&D 100 PETSc (pronounced PET-see), a suite of data structures and routines for the scalable (parallel) solution of partial differential equations (PDEs), has been named an R&D 100 winner in the software category. The PETSc team, lead by Barry Smith of Argonne National Laboratory, is part of the TOPS SciDAC project and also receives funding from the ASCR Base Math program. complete list of R&D 100 winners

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

New Climate Report Shows Regional Impacts

Evan Mills and Michael Wehner, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, contributed to the analysis of the effects of climate change on all regions of the United States, described in a major report released June 16, 2009 by the multi-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program.

For the southwest region of the United States the report forecasts a hotter, drier climate with significant effects on the environment, agriculture and health.

Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States covers such effects as changes in rainfall patterns, drought, wildfire, Atlantic hurricanes, and effects on food production, fish stocks and other wildlife, energy, agriculture, water supplies, and coastal communities.

The report addresses nine zones of the United States (Southwest, Northwest, Great Plains, Midwest, Southeast, Northeast, Alaska, U.S. islands, and coasts), and describes potential climate change effects in each. Some states may fall in more than one zone; California is part of the southwest zone, but also the coastal zone.

The precipitation map shown is one of the projections developed by Wehner. It shows, among other things, a substantial reduction in springtime rains in California, and summertime rains in the Pacific Northwest.

“Even in areas where precipitation is projected to increase, higher temperatures will cause greater evaporation leading to a future where drought conditions are the normal state. In the southwest United States, water resource issues will become a major issue,” says Wehner.

discovery highlights archive

SCIENTISTS BEHIND SCIDAC

Witek Nazarewicz honored by University of West Scotland

Witold Nazarewicz received an honorary doctorate from University of the West of Scotland at its gradation ceremony on July 8 in Paisley, Scotland. Witek, who is joint faculty with the University of Tennessee and scientific director of the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility, was also recently appointed a visiting professor at UWS following a three-month Carnegie Centenary Professorship that he held last year. Witek is co-PI of the SciDAC UNEDF project.

Cecilia Aragon receives Presidential Early Career Award

Researcher Cecilia Aragon was among the 100 researchers named last week by President Barack Obama to receive the prestigious Presidential Early Career for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) Award, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on early-career researchers. Together with two other young scientists from LBNL, Cecilia will receive her award in the fall at a White House ceremony.

The award recognized Aragon's groundbreaking research in data-intensive scientific workflow management, and pioneering development of innovative methods for visualization, analysis, and organization of massive scientific data sets, which will be critical to the success of the Department of Energy (DOE) mission.

scientist highlights archive

SCIDAC NEWS AND NOTES