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Rachel McDowell

Rachel McDowell is a science writer for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.

Justin Whitt OLCFPeople

Pioneering Frontier: Navigating a New Era

The “Pioneering Frontier” series features stories profiling the many talented ORNL employees behind the construction and operation of the OLCF’s exascale supercomputer, Frontier. The HPE Cray system will be available to users later this year. The world's first exascale supercomputer, Frontier, will soon lead users in the direction of discovery—and…
Rachel McDowell
May 31, 2022
Science

Where Worlds Collide

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicists Christian Bauer, Marat Freytsis, and Benjamin Nachman have leveraged an IBM Q quantum computer through the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF's) Quantum Computing User Program (QCUP) to capture part of a calculation of two protons colliding. The calculation can show the probability that an…
Rachel McDowell
April 13, 2022
PeopleScience

Pioneering Frontier: Optimizing Materials Models

The “Pioneering Frontier” series features stories profiling the many talented ORNL employees behind the construction and operation of the OLCF’s incoming exascale supercomputer, Frontier. The HPE Cray system was delivered in 2021, with full user operations expected in 2022. With the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) slated to launch…
Rachel McDowell
April 13, 2022
PeopleScience

Pioneering Frontier: Stepping Up CANDLE

The “Pioneering Frontier” series features stories profiling the many talented ORNL employees behind the construction and operation of the OLCF’s incoming exascale supercomputer, Frontier. The HPE Cray system was delivered in 2021, with full user operations expected in 2022. John Gounley is working on codes for the CANcer Distributed Learning…
Rachel McDowell
March 31, 2022
Frontier data center imageScience

Forging Ahead with Frontier: Ready to Crush Science

Computational users at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) are running scientific codes on Frontier’s architecture in the form of a powerful test system at the OLCF called Crusher. Frontier, an HPE Cray EX supercomputer capable of 1018 calculations per second—or 10 with 18 zeroes—was installed in late 2021 and is…
Rachel McDowell
March 28, 2022
Science

COVID-19 in the Classroom: Simulating the Spread

A team led by Rao Kotamarthi at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne) is using supercomputers at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to study how aerosol viral particles are distributed in a ventilated classroom. Using ORNL’s Summit, the nation’s fastest supercomputer, the team simulated the…
Rachel McDowell
February 24, 2022
People

Pioneering Frontier: Standing Up Exascale

The “Pioneering Frontier” series features stories profiling the many talented ORNL employees behind the construction and operation of the OLCF’s incoming exascale supercomputer, Frontier. The HPE Cray system was delivered in 2021, with full user operations expected in 2022. Deploying the nation’s first exascale supercomputer is no easy feat. It’s…
Rachel McDowell
January 25, 2022
Science

Supercomputing for Swift Protein Modeling

Uncovering the molecular structures of proteins can help scientists elucidate biological functions of proteins and search for drug candidates for diseases. To better understand proteins, scientists can use imaging techniques to probe their molecular structures. However, many imaging techniques fall short of capturing details at the atomic level. That’s why…
Rachel McDowell
January 25, 2022
Technology

Team Taps ORNL’s DataFed to Gain Materials Insights

A team led by to Joshua Agar, a faculty member in Lehigh University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has realized the first live implementation of an innovative data management system at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Called DataFed, the system was designed to allow…
Rachel McDowell
January 25, 2022
Visualization of an aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 particle with various components inside and outside the particle.Science

2021 at the OLCF: Year in Review

In 2021, supercomputing at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) enabled new scientific breakthroughs amid the global pandemic. From modeling small particles called quarks to simulating turbulence in fusion reactors, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility's (OLCF's) flagship supercomputer, Summit, continued to provide unprecedented opportunities…
Rachel McDowell
December 30, 2021
Science

Closing In on Fusion

The same process that fuels stars could one day be used to generate massive amounts of power here on Earth. Nuclear fusion—in which atomic nuclei fuse to form heavier nuclei and release energy in the process—promises to be a long-term, sustainable, and safe form of energy. But scientists are still trying to fine-tune the process of…
Rachel McDowell
December 13, 2021
An image depicting a shock wave propagating through diamondScience

Team Earns Gordon Bell Prize Finalist Nomination for Simulating Carbon at Extreme Pressures and Temperatures

Are diamonds even stronger than we’ve ever imagined? Can other post-diamond phases appear when diamond is subjected to extreme pressures? A team used machine-learned descriptions of interatomic interactions on the 200-petaflop Summit supercomputer at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to model more than a…
Rachel McDowell
November 17, 2021
People

Pioneering Frontier: Meeting Industry at Scale

The “Pioneering Frontier” series features stories profiling the many talented ORNL employees behind the construction and operation of the OLCF’s incoming exascale supercomputer, Frontier. The HPE Cray system is scheduled for delivery in 2021, with full user operations in 2022. When the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) next supercomputer,…
Rachel McDowell
September 30, 2021
People

OLCF Organizes First Hackathon on Slate Service

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) hosted its first ever Slate hackathon for users of the OLCF’s Slate platform, a resource that provides container orchestration services and gives users a chance to run specialized tools and workflows that support computational campaigns. The hackathon was developed and hosted by the…
Rachel McDowell
September 29, 2021
Science

Reaching Remarkable States of Matter with Laser Simulations

With the help of supercomputers, scientists are getting a better idea of how to study some of the strongest electromagnetic fields in the universe. Scientists aim to use high-power lasers to blast different materials and study the interplay between light and matter. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the study of how…
Rachel McDowell
September 10, 2021