Nov. 14, 2018 — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientist Kenneth Roche is a 2019 co-recipient of an Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
Roche, a member of PNNL’s High-Performance Computing Group and a lead in the DOE Exascale Computing Project, is one of a team of eight scientists led by Aurel Bulgac of the University of Washington. The team will investigate “Real-Time Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Strongly Interacting Nuclear Matter” at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) in the coming year.
Bulgac’s group, which includes Roche, specializes in the quantum mechanics of strongly correlated systems. Their tools include high-performance simulations on leadership-class computers—a good fit with OLCF’s capabilities. As the DOE review panel notes: “The proposal was submitted by a strong research team with significant experience in time-dependent density functional theory and computation. The algorithm and code was led by K. Roche, who is very experienced and is very much responsible for the computational tool that this proposal will utilize.“
This INCITE project will use full quantum mechanical predictive tools to quantitatively describe nuclear fission, collisions of heavy ions, and fusion. Their results have implications in the search for superheavy elements, for extending the periodic table of elements, and for explaining the origin and abundance of chemical elements in the universe. Their findings could have applications in medical tools, safety, national security, energy production, nuclear non-proliferation and attribution, and nuclear forensics.
DOE’s INCITE program, which gives researchers access to the nation’s fastest supercomputers and expert liaisons at the facilities, aims to accelerate scientific discoveries and technological innovations. The program focuses on large-scale, computationally intensive projects that address “grand challenges” in science and engineering. INCITE awards have been offered since 2004.
Source: PNNL