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NERSC's core mission is to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery. NERSC and its thousands of users actively contribute to all fields of energy-related science in which computation and data analysis play a central role. NERSC is cited in around 2,000 refereed scientific publications each year. A sample of science articles is at Science News and science presentations can be found at Science Highlights Presentations. On these pages, we present some highlights from our users and describe some of the ways NERSC gathers requirements for science and recognizes its users’ accomplishments.
Nobel Prize-Winning Research
NERSC has supported the work of six Nobel Prize-winning researchers and teams.
- 2017 Chemistry: Joachim Frank "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution" [MORE]
- 2015 Physics: SNO Collaboration "for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass" [MORE]
- 2013 Chemistry: Martin Karplus "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems" [MORE]
- 2011 Physics: Saul Perlmutter "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae" [MORE]
- 2007 Peace: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"
- 2006 Physics: George Smoot "for the discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation" [MORE]
- Science News Highlights of scientific discoveries and milestones enabled by NERSC and its computational and data resources.
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Science Vignettes
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- World's first 3-D Simulations of Superluminous Supernovae
- New Estimates for Ice Sheet Mass Loss
- Designing Materials with Tunable Electrical and Magnetic Behaviors
- Near-Real Time Networked Analysis of KSTAR Data
- New Conservation Laws in Turbulent Magnetized Flows
- Petawatt Laser Guiding and Electron Beam Acceleration to 8 GeV in a Laser-Heated Capillary Discharge Waveguide
- Towards Simpler Fusion Power Devices
- Cutting Edge Simulations of Lasers Interacting With Dense Plasmas
- Vulnerability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
- Machine-Learned Impurity Level Prediction in Semiconductors
- Mapping Neutral Hydrogen in the Early Universe
- Enabling Thermochemistry Estimation using Deep Learning
- Exploring the High-Pressure Materials Genome
- DOE Models Simulate Antarctic Ice Sheet Evolution
- ATLAS Experiment: Scaling High Throughput Workflows
- Amazon Soil Moisture Impact on Carbon Dioxide Emissions
- Machine-Learned Impurity Prediction in Semiconductors
- Detection of Helium in Sub-luminous Thermonuclear Supernovae
- Binding Preferences Predictions Across the Actinide Series
- New Methodology for Simulating Nanoporous Materials
- Quantifying Systematic Error in Monte Carlo Simulations
- Magnetic Reconnection: A bridge to Plasma Kinetic Scales
- How California Wildfires Can Impact Water Availability
- Predicting Plasma Pressure in Future Fusion Facilities
- Hydrogen a Culprit in Battery Degredation
- An Integral Role for Gluons in the Proton's Pressure Distribution
- New Insights Into the Human Gut Microbiome
- A New Understanding of Perovskite Solar Cells
- Squeezed nanocrystals: A new model predicts their shape
- Discovering Hundreds of New Gravitational Lenses
- Searching for Evidence of a ‘Neutrinoless’ Particle Process
- Machine Learning Tool Could Provide Unexpected Scientific Insights into COVID-19
- New Materials to Improve Solar Cell Efficiency
- Matter & Antimatter Creation from Real Photon Interactions
- Projected Land Ice Contributions to Sea Level Rise
- Early Career HPC Achievement Awards NERSC HPC Achievement Awards recognize extraordinary scientific achievement of early career NERSC users and to encourage the innovative use of high performance computing resources.
- Science Highlights Presentations Quarterly highlight slides of recent scientific accomplishments from NERSC users.
- NERSC User Publications …
- COVID-19 Research at NERSC In the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, NERSC quickly provided urgently needed access to its high performance computing and data resources and staff expertise. Projects accessed NERSC resources to conduct COVID-related research through a number of different means, including NERSC’s standard mission science (“ERCAP”) allocation process and through strategic collaborations between NERSC/Berkeley Lab and research teams. In addition to ERCAP and strategic engagements, NERSC also…
- Accelerator Science Particle accelerators are among the largest, most complex, and most important scientific instruments in the world. Extreme scale computing technologies such as those at NERSC are needed for their design, optimization, commissioning, and operation.
- Astrophysics & Cosmology Numerical simulation is now the dominant mechanism of discovery in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology, which encompasses what may be the most fundamental problem in all of physics: the nature of dark energy and matter.
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Biological Sciences
Better knowledge of biomolecules and the processes they undergo is vital for achieving a predictive, systems-level understanding of complex systems that have potential use in bioenergy, carbon cycling, biosequestration, and biogeochemistry.
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Chemistry & Materials Science
Simulation plays an indispensable role in efforts to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels. The goal is to provide new or improved materials for use in a wide variety of applications.
- Greenhouse Gases Converted to Fuel
- Promise for Onion-Like Carbons as Supercapacitors
- Graphene as the Ultimate Membrane for Gas Separation
- Quantum Dynamics of Elementary Reactions in the Gas Phase and on Surfaces
- Transport and Self-Assembly in Molecular Nanosystems
- Speeding Up Zeolite Evaluation for Carbon Capture
- Climate & Earth Science By developing computational tools to effectively model Earth's climate and helping to understand, predict and mitigate the impacts of environmental contamination, scientists are ensuring that society can successfully adapt to a changing world.
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Energy Science
Be it better photovoltaic efficiency, finding deep-sea oil and gas reservoirs, or better understanding of chemical catalysts, energy research demands extreme-scale computing resources.
- Using Computation to Enhance LEDs
- Simulations Couple with Experiment to Boost Energy Research
- Artificial Photosynthesis I - Design Principles for Light Harvesting
- Artificial Photosynthesis II - Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) Simulations
- EFRC Carbon Capture and Sequestration Activities at NERSC
- Finding Hidden Oil and Gas Reserves
- Novel Methods for Harvesting Solar Energy
- Engineering Science Researchers in this area develop and apply a variety of advanced computational methodologies for solving large-scale complex fluid flow problems. These can arise in Department of Energy (DOE) mission areas related to energy, environmental, and industrial technology.
- Environmental Science NERSC users advance fundamental science to understand, predict and mitigate the impact of environmental contamination. This is especially important for remediation of contaminated areas where hazardous materials might become widely dispersed by groundwater flow.
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Fusion Science
If humans could harness nuclear fusion, the process that powers stars like our Sun, the world could have an inexhaustible energy source.
- New IndexPage
- Supercomputers Capture Solar Wind Turbulence
- Rotating Plasma Finding is Key for ITER
- A New Class of Tokamak Nonlinear Plasma Instability
- Magnetic Reconection
- Runaway Electron Confinement Modeling
- Computational Atomic Physics for Fusion Energy
- Heavy-Ion Fusion Science (HIFS)
- Predicting Materials Performance in extreme Fusion Environments
