Roy Musselman and Scott Futral were acknowledged for their contributions to simulations conducted on Livermore’s Sequoia supercomputer that were recognized with the 2015 Gordon Bell Prize, which was presented last December at the 2015 Supercomputing Conference (SC15). The simulations, led by University of Texas researchers, examined tectonic plates and convection in Earth’s mantle. “These advances will open the door to addressing such fundamental questions as what are the main drivers of plate motion and what are the key processes governing the occurrence of great earthquakes,” says Professor Georg Stadler of New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Using Sequoia’s peak performance, the simulations achieved an unprecedented 97 percent efficiency in software scalability, a new world record. “I’m gratified that Sequoia continues to contribute to groundbreaking calculations in computational science,” says Futral. Capable of 20 petaflops (quadrillion floating-point operations per second), the IBM Blue Gene/Q system is ranked third on the Top500 list of the world’s most powerful computers. The Gordon Bell Prize is awarded each year to recognize outstanding achievement in high-performance computing, with particular emphasis on innovation in applications in science, engineering, and large-scale data analytics.
A project titled Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Lawrence Livermore (CORAL), which will bring the Sierra supercomputer to the Laboratory in 2018, was recognized by HPCWire with an Editor’s Choice Award for Best HPC Collaboration Between Government and Industry. CORAL represents an innovative procurement strategy—pioneered by Livermore—that couples acquisition contracts with nonrecurring engineering contracts in a way that enables vendors to assume greater risks in their proposals than they would otherwise be able to for a computational system that is several years out. An IBM system, Sierra is expected to achieve performance exceeding 120 petaflops and will serve the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing Program, which is an integral part of stockpile stewardship. CORAL’s industry partners also include NVIDIA and Mellanox.
Materials scientist Troy Barbee, Jr., was inducted into Stanford University’s Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame (MAHF) in recognition for his work mentoring Stanford students over the years and for his achievements throughout his long career as a Native American researcher. “I feel honored to be selected for the MAHF, and I’m in some good company,” says Barbee.
After earning his Ph.D. at Stanford in 1965, Barbee began work there as a materials scientist—while serving as a freshman academic adviser—including becoming the associate director of the Center for Materials Research, where he established a capability to produce multilayer materials comprised of extremely thin layers only a few atoms thick using the then new technology of magnetron sputtering. Barbee joined Lawrence Livermore in 1985 and has continued developing multilayer materials using magnetron sputtering, producing multilayers of 78 of the 92 naturally occurring elements. According to Johns Hopkins University professor of materials science Timothy Weihs, who worked as a postdoctoral researcher for Barbee, “He was and remains a wonderful inspiration to many postdocs and collaborators. He constantly is thinking of new materials and applications.” Barbee has won three R&D 100 awards, and one of his top honors is his 2000 election to Uppsala University’s Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences—the oldest royal academy in Sweden—after being nominated by Nobel laureate Kai Siegbahn.
Kenneth Turteltaub was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in recognition of his development of ultraprecise accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) methods for biomedicine and for his work on carcinogenesis, macromolecule formation, and low-dose pharmacokinetics. “I’m very excited to have been selected, and I feel lucky to have been able to work with such a great and talented group of people over the years to make AMS useful for biomedicine,” says Turteltaub. Election as an AAAS fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers in recognition of scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Turteltaub was one of 347 AAAS members to receive the honor in 2015 out of over 120,000 members worldwide.