SALT LAKE CITY — The University of Utah is among six schools selected as centers of excellence by the National Nuclear Security Administration for focus on the emerging field of predictive science.
Six universities were selected either as a Multidisciplinary Simulation Center — including the U. — or as a Single-Discipline Center. The MSCs will receive $3.2 million and the SDCs will receive $1.6 million each year for five years under NNSA's Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program II agreement.
Other Multidisciplinary Simulation Centers were the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and Stanford University.
The University of Florida, Texas A&M University and the University of Notre Dame were chosen as Single-Discipline Centers.
Predictive science is the application of verified and validated computational simulations to predict the behavior of complex systems where routine experiments are not feasible. The selected PSAAP II centers will focus on unclassified applications of interest to NNSA and its national laboratories — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
The PSAAP II centers will develop the science and engineering models and software for their large-scale simulations utilizing methods of verification and validation and uncertainty quantification, with an additional focus on extreme-scale computing. The goal of these disciplines is to enable scientists to make precise statements about the degree of confidence they have in their simulation-based predictions.