National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center

Director's Note 5
In parallel with these changes, NERSC expanded its workforce in 2015, hiring 18
additional staff members. Our new staff have brought new perspectives to NERSC,
and they are playing a critical role in our strategic initiatives. New positions became
available due to a large number of retirements in 2014 and 2015, hiring of postdocs
into NESAP and normal turnover and churn from competition with Bay Area
technology companies.
Also in 2015, NERSC reinvigorated its Private Sector Partnership program, bringing
on nine new industry partners in energy-specific fields such as semiconductor
manufacturing and geothermal modeling. NERSC has been working with industry
partners through the DOE’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant program
for many years. Since 2011, industry researchers have been awarded 40 million hours at
NERSC via the SBIR program, and NERSC currently has about 130 industry users
from 50 companies.
All of these changes allowed us to continue to address our primary mission: to accelerate
scientific discovery for the DOE Office of Science through HPC and data analysis. In
2015, NERSC users reported more than 2,000 refereed papers based on work performed
at the center and NERSC staff contributed some 120 papers to scientific journals and
conferences, showcasing the center’s increasing involvement in technology and software
development designed to enhance the utilization of HPC across a broad range of
science and data-management applications.
Looking back on an exciting year, we are especially proud of what we were able to
accomplish given the many transitions we experienced. NERSC is regarded as a
well-run scientific computing facility providing some of the largest computing and
storage systems available anywhere, but what really distinguishes the center is its success
in creating an environment that makes these resources effective for scientific research
and productivity. We couldn’t achieve this without our dedicated staff, our great user
community and the continued support of our DOE Office of Science sponsors.
Sudip Dosanjh
NERSC Division Director