Staff members of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a DOE Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), were recognized with an Achievement Award at the Secretary’s Honor Awards ceremony presented by Secretary of Energy Rick Perry at DOE headquarters on November 19.
Their Achievement Award spotlights the Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Livermore (CORAL) Project, which led to the installations of the IBM Power System AC922 Summit supercomputer at ORNL and the IBM Sierra supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“This award is a great honor and was only made possible by the efforts of the entire staff of the OLCF facility, as that is what it takes to deliver the fastest and smartest supercomputer in the world,” said OLCF Program Director Buddy Bland.
The annual Secretary’s Honor Awards recognize outstanding achievements of individuals and teams who have gone above and beyond in fulfilling the Energy Department’s mission and serving the nation. The Achievement Award specifically honors groups or teams of DOE employees and/or contractors who together accomplished significant achievements while also demonstrating cooperation and teamwork in attaining their goals.
“The Summit and Sierra procurements resulting from CORAL are delivering breakthrough insights in science and national security,” the DOE said in its awards statement. “They have transformed the international landscape in high performance computing, and they will influence the modernization of future generations of computing throughout the Department of Energy complex. With these new machines, the US is reasserting its leadership in an area of technology that is central to scientific discovery, industrial competitiveness, and national security.”
Other ORNL honorees include members of these Achievement Award-winning teams: Warhead Measurement Campaign Team, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Denuclearization Team, Molybdenum-99 Team, High Burnup Cask Demonstration Project Team, and the American Museum of Science and Energy Project Team.
The awards ceremony included Secretary Perry’s final address to DOE employees before his resignation.
“In all that we’re doing or hope to do, we are striving to create a better nation and a better world for our fellow human beings,” he said.
For more information about some of the OLCF staff members who made the Summit project possible, visit our Faces of Summit series.
UT-Battelle LLC manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
