Award Abstract # 2031623
NSF Frontera Allocation Travel Grant

NSF Org: OAC
Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC)
Recipient: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
Initial Amendment Date: May 12, 2020
Latest Amendment Date: August 31, 2023
Award Number: 2031623
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Edward Walker
edwalker@nsf.gov
 (703)292-4863
OAC
 Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC)
CSE
 Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Start Date: September 1, 2020
End Date: August 31, 2024 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $8,190.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $8,190.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2020 = $8,190.00
History of Investigator:
  • Aleksei Aksimentiev (Principal Investigator)
    aksiment@illinois.edu
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
506 S WRIGHT ST
URBANA
IL  US  61801-3620
(217)333-2187
Sponsor Congressional District: 13
Primary Place of Performance: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
506 South Wright Street
Urbana
IL  US  61801-3620
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
13
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): Y8CWNJRCNN91
Parent UEI: V2PHZ2CSCH63
NSF Program(s): Leadership-Class Computing
Primary Program Source: 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s):
Program Element Code(s): 778100
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.070

ABSTRACT

For nearly four decades, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has played a leadership role in provisioning advanced cyberinfrastructure capabilities for the Nation's Science and Engineering (S&E) researchers. An important component in this investment is the leadership-class computing program that provides computational and data analytics capabilities at the largest scale to inspire transformative S&E discoveries that would not be possible otherwise. NSF's current leadership-class computing investment supports Frontera, the largest High-Performance Computing (HPC) system on a US academic campus. The Frontera system is deployed and operated by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. This travel grant will support the participation of researchers who have been awarded a computer time allocation on the Frontera system at a future Principal Investigator (PI) meeting organized by TACC. The award will also support travel for technical coordination between researchers and the Frontera project to ensure optimal and effective utilization of the Frontera system.

The goal of the PI meeting is to allow Frontera research users, as well as their students, to share scientific results, exchange practical lessons-learned, and present their overall experience from using the Frontera system. In addition to research presentations, the meeting will have ample time, as well as facilitated sessions, to promote increased interaction between Frontera research users and project staff. The outcome of the PI meeting will not only enable the Frontera project to better understand and serve the scientific research community, but also build a community to better represent the unique needs of S&E research that require access to NSF leadership computing facilities. To facilitate deeper coordination beyond the PI meeting, this award will also provide travel support to enable technical coordination between the research user teams and the Frontera project.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The travel award facilitated a fruitful collaboration between software engineers and staff scientists at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and researchers at the University of Illinois. This collaboration enabled research and discovery at the interface of biology and nanotechnology using one of the world's most advanced supercomputer systems, TACC Frontera. The award facilitated direct, face to face interactions between the scientists and the supercomputer staff, which has increased the utilization of the Frontera hardware and paved the way to advanced simulations. Such interactions were instrumental in resuming the community-building efforts that had been disrupted by the advent of the pandemic. The award supported the Illinois team's participation in the annual Frontera supercomputer users meetings in Austin, Texas. A number of graduate students undertook travel to the Frontera site with the objective of presenting their latest research results to a broad scientific community. The team at Illinois gained valuable first-hand knowledge of future supercomputer systems, which has facilitated their preparation of software for the next generation of machines. The interactions between the University of Illinois team and the Frontera supercomputer staff have established a foundation for a lasting relationship that will continue to benefit both teams long after the conclusion of the award.

 


Last Modified: 10/10/2024
Modified by: Aleksei Aksimentiev

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