NERSC Science Acceleration Program

The NERSC Science Acceleration Program (NESAP) is a collaborative effort that prepares code teams, vendors, and library and tools developers for advanced architectures and new systems.

The program originated in 2014 to help users prepare for the Cori system. It has continued, targeting Perlmutter, NERSC’s first production GPU-based system.

Looking forward, the focus of NESAP is moving toward a range of end-to-end workflows, including those for the next generation of NERSC systems and for DOE’s Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) program.

NESAP Pathfinding

NESAP Pathfinding projects are one-year projects intended to prepare for and better use advanced workflow capabilities such as hardware acceleration, reconfigurable storage, advanced scheduling, and integration with edge services, as well as alignment with DOE’s IRI program.

NESAP for NERSC-10

The NERSC-10 system, arriving in 2026, is designed to deliver 10 times the performance of Perlmutter and power the most complex scientific workflows, seamlessly integrating simulation, experimental/observational data analysis, and AI-driven discovery.

NESAP for NERSC-10 will provide hands-on collaboration to optimize and accelerate researchers’ workflows, ensuring they are ready to take full advantage of cutting-edge system capabilities.

NESAP postdoctoral fellowships

Postdoctoral fellows fill essential roles within NESAP, collaborating with scientific teams to enable and improve solutions to deep, meaningful problems across all program areas funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science.

NESAP fellowships provide exceptional scholars with valuable real-world experience in large-scale scientific high performance computing. Fellows work on projects specifically selected to advance the leading edge of the discipline.

NERSC solicits applications for NESAP postdocs as needed. NESAP fellows are selected based on the match between their skills and the needs of current NESAP projects.