ALCF Researchers Contribute to Gordon Bell Prize Finalist Study

An Argonne-led team was selected as a finalist for the 2024 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for their work to develop MProt-DPO, an AI-driven protein design framework. The team’s study, “MProt-DPO: Breaking the ExaFLOPS Barrier for Multimodal Protein Design Workflows with Direct Preference Optimization,” leveraged five of the world’s leading HPC systems, including the ALCF’s Aurora exascale supercomputer, to develop and demonstrate a scalable, end-to-end workflow for accelerating the discovery of new proteins for medicine, catalysis, and other applications. The team includes Argonne researchers Gautham Dharuman, Kyle Hippe, Alexander Brace, Sam Foreman, Väinö Hatanpää, Varuni Sastry, Huihuo Zheng, Logan Ward, Servesh Muralidharan, Archit Vasan, Bharat Kale, Carla Mann, Heng Ma, Murali Emani, Michael Papka, Ian Foster, Rick Stevens, and Venkatram Vishwanath. Additional contributors include Yun-Hsuan Cheng, Yuliana Zamora, and Tom Gibbs (NVIDIA); Shengchao Liu (University of California, Berkeley); Chaowei Xiao (University of Wisconsin-Madison); Mahidhar Tatineni (San Diego Supercomputing Center); and Deepak Canchi, Jerome Mitchell, Koichi Yamada, and Maria Garzaran (Intel).

ALCF Team Receives Best Paper Award at ISAV 2024

A team including ALCF researchers received the Best Paper Award at the SC24 conference’s In Situ Infrastructures for Enabling Extreme-Scale Analysis and Visualization (ISAV 2024) Workshop. The paper, “Bridging Gaps in Simulation Analysis through a General Purpose, Bidirectional Steering Interface with Ascent,” was authored by Argonne’s Victor Mateevitsi, Silvio Rizzi, Joseph Insley, Michael Papka, Thomas Marrinan, and Dimitrios Fytanidis, along with Utah State University’s Andres Sewell and Steve Petruzza, and Cyrus Harrison and Nicole Marsaglia of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Sewell, the lead author, has been a summer student at the ALCF for the past two years. The paper introduces a framework for adding interactive, human-in-the-loop steering controls to existing simulation codes. This capability allows scientists to pause, adjust, and resume large-scale simulations without starting over.

ALCF-Led Team Receives Best Paper Award at PMBS24

A team of researchers led by ALCF staff received the Best Paper Award at SC24’s Performance Modeling, Benchmarking and Simulation of High Performance Computer Systems (PMBS24) Workshop. The paper, “Ponte Vecchio Across the Atlantic: Single-Node Benchmarking of Two Intel GPU Systems,” provides micro-benchmarking data from applications running on the ALCF’s Aurora supercomputer and another Intel GPU-powered system, housed at the University of Cambridge. Argonne’s Thomas Applencourt, Servesh Muralidharan, Colleen Bertoni, JaeHyuk Kwack, Ye Luo, Esteban Rangel, John Tramm, and Yasaman Ghadar authored the paper in collaboration with University of Bristol’s Aditya Sadawarte and Tom Deakin, and University of Cambridge’s Christopher Edsall.

Aurora Install Team Recognized for Outstanding Safety Performance

As part of the 2024 Argonne Board of Governors Awards, the Aurora installation team received the James B. Porter, Jr. Team Award for Outstanding Safety Performance, which recognizes teams that embody the principles of integrated safety management and contribute to a positive safety culture. Honored for their efforts in safely installing and preparing Argonne’s Aurora exascale system, team members included ALCF’s William Allcock, Jonathan Bouvet, Susan Coghlan, Joseph Crawford, Gregory Cross, Jeff Goetz, Michael Hogan, Carissa Holohan, Ti Leggett, and Haseebuddin Syed in collaboration with contributors from across the laboratory, including Christopher Baltas, Adena Banas, Erika Gutierrez, Cari Helberg, William Lucnik, Mitchell McClellan, Lisa Polowy, Raihan Rahman, Dillon Roark, Dana Silvestri, Michael Talamonti, and Jeremy Young.

Papka Named UIC Warren S. McCulloch Professor of Computer Science, Director of Electronic Visualization Laboratory

ALCF Director Michael Papka was named the Warren S. McCulloch Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago, an endowed professorship recognizing leadership and impact in the field while supporting continued research and teaching. In addition to this honor, Papka was also appointed director of UIC’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), an interdisciplinary research space focused on collaborative visualization, virtual reality, and advanced computing and networking infrastructure.

ECP Team Earns DOE Secretary of Energy Achievement Award

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recognized the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) with the Secretary of Energy Honor Achievement Award for its role in delivering an exascale computing ecosystem for the nation. The multi-lab collaboration involved several key staff from Argonne, including Lois Curfman McInnes, David Martin, Susan Coghlan, Todd Munson, and Yasaman Ghadar, who were on hand to receive the award as part of the ECP leadership team.

Shilpika Earns Recognition in Argonne’s Postdoc Research Slam

ALCF postdoctoral researcher Shilpika tied for third place in Argonne’s 2024 Postdoc Research Slam with her presentation, “Alice in the Data Labyrinth: Solving Supercomputer Mysteries Through Intelligent Visuals.” The event showcased research from postdoctoral scholars in three-minute pitches before a live audience and panel of judges. Shilpika later presented her work as part of the Argonne OutLoud lecture series event, “Global Problem Solvers: Early-Career Scientists Explore New Frontiers to Unleash Discoveries for Today and Tomorrow.”

Mateevitsi Named Senior Member of IEEE and ACM

In 2024, Victor Mateevitsi, ALCF assistant computer scientist, was named a senior member of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), recognizing his professional experience and contributions to the field.

Papka Honored with IEEE Chicago Section Award

ALCF Director Michael Papka received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Chicago Section’s Distinguished Senior Research and Development Award, recognizing his contributions to high-performance computing. Argonne National Laboratory was also honored with the Friends of the IEEE Chicago Section Award, highlighting the lab’s collaborative efforts with the organization.

Papka Receives NIU Distinguished Alumni Award

ALCF Director Michael Papka received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Northern Illinois University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The award honors alumni who have made significant contributions in their professional field or through civic, cultural, or charitable service.

Research Team Using ALCF Resources Wins HPCwire Award for Best Use of HPC in Physical Sciences

A team with researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, as well as University of Chicago, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and University of Minnesota, received the HPCwire Editors’ Choice Award for Best Use of HPC in Physical Sciences for work utilizing ALCF resources including the Polaris supercomputer and the Globus data management platform. This work was aimed at developing a physics-informed transformer model to predict gravitational wave evolution for spinning binary black hole mergers. The team’s AI approach dramatically reduces simulation time from days to seconds, handling terabyte-scale datasets with high accuracy.

ALCF-APS Pipeline Honored with HPCwire Readers’ Choice Award

An automated pipeline integrating ALCF supercomputers and Advanced Photon Source instruments to enable near-real-time data analysis was named the Best HPC in the Cloud Use Case, winning an HPCwire Readers’ Choice Award. The pipeline allows scientists to adjust experiments on the fly, potentially accelerating scientific breakthroughs by delivering rapid results while researchers still have facility access.