Project Highlights


	Modeling the Molecular Basis of Parkinson's Disease Scientists from the San Diego Supercomputer Center at University of California—San Diego are leveraging the power of the Blue Gene/P at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility to learn more about the molecular basis of Parkinson's disease and explore ways to treat it.

	Probing the Properties of Water Although the structure of water has been probed for more than 100 years, scientists still can’t agree on its electronic structure and detailed atomic structure. Using an INCITE allocation, a team of researchers led by a chemistry professor at the University of California turned to computational modeling for the answer.

	Making Safe, Clean Nuclear Energy Available Globally Argonne and University of Illinois researchers are carrying out large-scale numerical simulations of turbulent thermal transport in sodium-cooled reactor cores. These simulations will enable researchers to gain an understanding of the fundamental thermal mixing phenomena within advanced recycling reactor cores, which can lead to improved safety and economy of these pivotal designs.

	Improving Aircraft Engine Combustor Simulations Pratt & Whitney has been exploring leading-edge combustor design methods using the Blue Gene/P supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility as part of DOE's INCITE program. The research has led to improved capabilities and reduced solution times for three-dimensional combustor simulations. The improvements are being applied to P&W's next-generation engine to deliver unprecedented reductions in emissions, noise, and cost of ownership as compared to current engines.

	Enabling Breakthrough Innovation at P&G Procter & Gamble researchers are investigating the molecular mechanisms of bubble formation in foams. An understanding of how suds form and break down is critical in the development of many consumer goods, foods, and fire control materials.

	Breaking New Ground in Membrane Protein Research Argonne National Laboratory and The University of Chicago are investigating the voltage-gating mechanism of membrane ion channels to understand how the membrane-associated molecular protein-machines are able to carry out their functions.

	Illuminating Scientists' Knowledge of the Universe with "Standard Candles" Researchers from The University of Chicago's ASC/Alliance Flash Center are studying critical aspects of Type Ia supernovae, among the brightest and most powerful exploding stars in the universe. Type Ia create many of the elements from which we are made and are important for measuring distances in the universe.

	Preventing Cardiac Rhythm Disorders Researchers are simulating potentially dangerous rhythm disorders of the heart that will provide greater insight into these disorders and an opportunity to test ideas for how to prevent or treat them.

	Deepening the Understanding of Interactions between Quarks and Gluons Researchers from the University of California-Santa Barbara are generating gauge configurations with up, down and strange quarks on sufficiently fine-grained lattices that have sufficiently small up and down quark masses to enable the extrapolation of key quantities of the chiral and continuum limits. The gauge configurations will be used to determine a wide range of physical quantities that are important to high energy and nuclear physics research.

	GE Global Research Enables Next-Generation Energy and Propulsion Aerodynamic noise is a barrier technology to the viability of next-generation “green” low-emission aircraft propulsion (jet and fan noise) and energy systems (wind turbine blade noise). Scientists at GE Global Research are actively developing design technologies to understand and reduce such noise sources. Accurate and detailed multi-scale numerical simulations for realistic jet noise prediction can prove to be a game-changer in future development efforts.

	Exploring Software-Based Parallel Volume Rendering on the IBM Blue Gene/P As data sizes and supercomputer architectures grow toward petascale and beyond, software-based visualization performed directly on parallel supercomputers offers an attractive alternative to rendering on graphics clusters. This direct visualization can be accomplished with volume rendering, a common general-purpose technique for visualizing scientific data sets.

	Predicting Structures of Biologically Important Proteins University of Washington researchers are accurately predicting structures of biologically important proteins; engineering novel protein-protein interactions and protein-based inhibitors, which would be a significant step towards development of novel therapeutics; and designing catalysts of carbamate hydrolysis with applications in contaminated soil bio-remediation.

	Designing Novel Nanostructured Hydrogen Storage Materials Northwestern University research is focusing on rationally designing novel nanostructured hydrogen storage materials with fast (de)hydrogenation kinetics and favorable thermodynamics.

	Understanding How a Mature Star Creates Carbon-12 Nuclei Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are calculating structural and reaction properties of light- and medium-mass nuclei into the iron region from the complex two- and three-nucleon forces among protons and neutrons, potentially providing an understanding from first principles to triple-alpha burning – the process by which a mature star creates carbon-12 nuclei from helium-4 nuclei and the structure of exotic nuclei with many more neutrons than protons.

	Preparing for Future Computer Systems with 10 Million CPUs Sandia National Laboratories researchers are scaling the Plan 9 distributed operating system on Blue Gene/P, measuring the performance of applications of interest, and testing all aspects of the operating system's environment in preparation for future computer systems with 10 million central processing units.

	Developing the Next Generation Community Climate System Model Researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research are working with a large community of scientists to develop and use the next generation of DOE and National Science Foundation's Community Climate System Model.

	Gaining a New Understanding of Chemical Reactions in Solutions and at Interfaces Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers are developing a new understanding of chemical reactions in solutions and at interfaces, especially in the area of hydrogen storage and catalysis in order to establish a protocol for the application of high-performance computing to current and future Grand Challenges in the chemical sciences.

	Gaining Insight into Turbulence Researchers from Princeton University and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory are gaining a better understanding of turbulence as a primary mechanism by which particles and energy diffuse across the confining magnetic field in toroidal fusion systems. Results from these studies may have direct relevance to the future performance of the international burning plasma experiment called ITER.

	Applying LES to Computation of Flow within a Helicopter Turbine Chamber Researchers from the European Centre for Research and Advanced Training in Scientific Computation are working on a first-time application of a new simulation method – called Large Eddy Simulation – to the computation of the unsteady reacting flow within a complete helicopter turbine chamber.

	Conducting Numerical Experiments of Thermal Striping in Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactors Argonne National Laboratory researchers are conducting detailed numerical experiments of thermal striping in sodium-cooled fast reactors. Designers of the Advanced Recycle Reactor will use the project's results to better understand the physics of jet mixing in reactor vessels, leading to more optimal designs for future facilities.

	Studying the Flow of Dense Suspensions and Colloidal Systems National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers are studying the flow of dense suspensions and related colloidal systems composed of rigid bodies, with and without interparticle interactions, having a wide range of size and shape, and under a variety of flow conditions, such as shear and around obstacles.

	Developing Performance Tools and Methods for Leadership-Class Computing Systems Led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a multi-institutional consortium of computer scientists is investigating the performance characteristics of leadership-class computing systems and developing performance tools and methodologies for these systems. These data and tools will enable computational scientists and system administrators to use leadership-class computer systems more effectively and help them prepare to use the next generation petascale systems, accelerating the achievement of the INCITE science goals.