WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced plans to provide up to $32 million for research to advance the development of sophisticated software for the chemical sciences. 

The effort aims to take advantage of the DOE national laboratories’ rapidly advancing supercomputing capabilities, including emerging exascale systems capable of a billion-billion operations per second, to accelerate the discovery and development of chemical mechanisms for a wide variety of potential applications. 

“The DOE national laboratories host some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world,” said Dr. Chris Fall, Director of DOE’s Office of Science. “This research will harness these extraordinary capabilities to advance our understanding and control of chemical processes applicable to energy and a host of other areas.”

National laboratories, universities, and industry will be eligible to compete for the four-year awards, which will be selected on the basis of peer review. The Department anticipates awards for large multidisciplinary, multi-institutional teams pioneering new software development as well as smaller teams working to add functionality to existing software packages.

All software is required to be open-source. A primary aim is to take maximum advantage of emerging exascale computing capabilities at user facilities at Argonne, Oak Ridge, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, as well as future follow-on systems.

Total planned funding is $32 million for projects of four years in duration, with $8 million in Fiscal Year 2020 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations.

Pre-applications will be due on December 2, 2020, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, while the deadline for final applications is February 8, 2021, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time. 

The Funding Opportunity Announcement, sponsored by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) within DOE’s Office of Science, can be found on the BES funding opportunities page.

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