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Summit’s Bonus Year of Scientific Achievement

Leadership-class supercomputers dedicated to open science are not built to last forever. In fact, they have a limited lifespan by design. No matter how powerful they may be on launch day, advancements in computing technology and changing computing needs will push them closer to obsolescence with each passing year until…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynDecember 3, 202415 min

Protein Design on Demand

Researchers used the world’s fastest supercomputer to train an artificial intelligence model to draw up blueprints for the building blocks of life. The study earned the multi-institutional team a finalist nomination for the Association for Computing Machinery’s Gordon Bell Prize, which honors innovation in applying high-performance computing to applications in science,…
Matt LakinMatt LakinNovember 14, 20246 min
DNA research

Bigger, Faster, Smarter Genetics Research

A team of researchers used the Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a new methodology for conducting a genome-wide association study, or GWAS, to earn a finalist nomination for the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Gordon Bell Prize for outstanding achievement in high-performance computing,…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynNovember 1, 20247 min
Exascale new frontier OLCF Banner

Exascale’s New Frontier: ExaBiome

PI: Kathy Yelick Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project, or ECP, set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That meant rethinking, reinventing and optimizing dozens of scientific applications…
Matt LakinMatt LakinSeptember 23, 20246 min
Exascale new frontier OLCF Banner

Exascale’s New Frontier: CANDLE

PI: Rick Stevens Associate Laboratory Director, Computing, Environment and Life Sciences, Argonne National Laboratory In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap meant rethinking,…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynSeptember 4, 20248 min
Frontier ORNL

Breaking Benchmarks: Frontier Supercomputer Sets New Standard in Molecular Simulation

When scientists pushed the world’s fastest supercomputer to its limits, they found those limits stretched beyond even their biggest expectations. The Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory set a new ceiling in performance when it debuted in 2022 as the first exascale system in history…
Matt LakinMatt LakinMay 13, 20246 min
water molecules

Something in the Water Does Not Compute

Computational scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have published a study in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation that questions a long-accepted factor in simulating the molecular dynamics of water: the 2 femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) time step. The femtosecond is a timescale…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynMay 6, 20247 min
SLAC LINAC

ORNL and SLAC Team Up for Breakthrough Biology Projects

Plans to unite the capabilities of two cutting-edge technological facilities funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science promise to usher in a new era of dynamic structural biology. Through DOE’s Integrated Research Infrastructure, or IRI, initiative, the facilities will complement each other’s technologies in the pursuit of science…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynMay 6, 202410 min

New Data Processing Automation Grows Plant Science at ORNL

At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists studying plant characteristics have access to sophisticated robotic imaging tools and sensors at the Advanced Plant Phenotyping Laboratory, or APPL. This greenhouse-like lab offers one of the most diverse suites of imaging capabilities for plant phenotyping worldwide, letting scientists quickly…
Betsy SonewaldBetsy SonewaldApril 15, 20245 min

Fungal ‘Bouncers’ Patrol Plant-Microbe Relationship

By Stephanie Seay, ORNL A new computational framework created by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers is accelerating their understanding of who's in, who's out, who’s hot and who's not in the soil microbiome, where fungi often act as bodyguards for plants, keeping friends close and foes at bay. The research…
OLCF Staff WriterOLCF Staff WriterJanuary 17, 20246 min
cicada wing nanosurface

Advancing Nanoscience Through Largescale MD Simulations

Over the past decade, teams of engineers, chemists and biologists have analyzed the physical and chemical properties of cicada wings, hoping to unlock the secret of their ability to kill microbes on contact. If this function of nature can be replicated by science, it may lead to products with inherently…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynJuly 14, 20239 min
TFIIH protein complex

New Insights Into a Shapeshifting Protein Complex

Transcription factor IIH, or TFIIH, pronounced “TF two H,” is a veritable workhorse among the protein complexes that control human cell activity. It plays critical roles both in transcription — the highly regulated enzymatic synthesis of RNA from a DNA template — and in the repair of damaged DNA. But…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynJuly 7, 20238 min
Researchers created high-resolution computer simulations that revealed incredibly dynamic movement of H1N1 glycoproteins. (credit: Lorenzo Casalino / Amaro Lab / UC San Diego)

ORNL Supercomputing Resources Support Simulation of Influenza Virus Showing Universal Vaccine Promise

According to the World Health Organization, each year influenza infects an estimated 1 billion people worldwide. Between 3 and 5 million of these cases are severe, and up to 650,000 cases result in influenza-related respiratory deaths. Seasonal flu vaccines are reformulated each year to match the dominant strains, and when…
Quinn BurkhartQuinn BurkhartFebruary 22, 20235 min

Autocoding Cancer

An algorithm developed by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in partnership with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is speeding up classification, or coding, of cancer pathology reports. The early results from the Cancer Moonshot program show that the algorithm dramatically reduces the time it…
Betsy SonewaldBetsy SonewaldFebruary 10, 20236 min

Computational Study Finds Genetic Links, Therapy Targets for Varicose Veins

Media Contact: Stephanie G Seay As part of a multi-institutional research project, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory leveraged their computational systems biology expertise and the largest, most diverse set of health data to date to explore the genetic basis of varicose veins. The team identified…
OLCF Staff WriterOLCF Staff WriterJanuary 30, 20236 min