[Federal Register Volume 67, Number 12 (Thursday, January 17, 2002)]
[Notices]
[Pages 2421-2423]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 02-1227]


=======================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY


Office of Science Financial Assistance Program Notice 02-16: 
Early Career Principal Investigator Program in Applied Mathematics, 
Computer Science and High-Performance Networks

AGENCY: U.S. Department of Energy.

ACTION: Notice inviting grant applications.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY: The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) of 
the Office of Science (SC), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), hereby 
announces its interest in receiving applications for grants in support 
of its

[[Page 2422]]

Early Career Principal Investigator Program. The purpose of this 
program is to support research in applied mathematics, computer science 
and networks performed by exceptionally talented scientists and 
engineers early in their careers. The full text of Program Notice 02-16 
is available via the Internet using the following web site address: 
http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html.

DATES: To permit timely consideration for award in Fiscal Year 2002, 
completed applications in response to this notice should be received by 
April 17, 2002, to be accepted for merit review and funding in Fiscal 
Year 2002.

ADDRESSES: Completed applications referencing Program Notice 02-16, 
should be forwarded to: U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, 
Grants and Contracts Division, SC-64, 19901 Germantown Road, 
Germantown, MD 20874-1290, ATTN: Program Notice 02-16. This address 
must be used when submitting applications by U.S. Postal Service 
Express Mail or any commercial mail delivery service, or when hand-
carried by the applicant. An original and seven copies of the 
application must be submitted.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Walter M. Polansky, Office of 
Advanced Scientific Computing Research, SC-31, Office of Science, U.S. 
Department of Energy, 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown, MD 20874-1290, 
telephone: (301) 903-5800, e-mail: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:   

Program Mission

    The primary mission of the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing 
Research, which is carried out by the Mathematical, Information and 
Computational Sciences (MICS) Division, is to discover, develop and 
deploy the computational and networking tools that enable researchers 
in the scientific disciplines to analyze, model, simulate and predict 
complex physical, chemical, and biological phenomena important to DOE. 
To accomplish this mission, the MICS Division fosters and supports 
fundamental research in advanced scientific computing--applied 
mathematics, computer science and networking--and operates 
supercomputers, a high performance network and related facilities. 
Further descriptions of the base research portion of the MICS 
portfolio, which is the scope of this Notice is provided below:

Applied Mathematical Sciences Research

    The objective of the applied mathematics component of the MICS 
research portfolio is to support research on the underlying 
mathematical understanding as well as the numerical algorithms needed 
to enable effective description and prediction of physical, chemical 
and biological systems such as fluids, materials, magnetized plasmas, 
or protein molecules. This includes, but is not limited to, methods for 
solving large systems of partial differential equations on parallel 
computers, techniques for choosing optimal values for parameters in 
large systems with hundreds to hundreds of thousands of parameters, 
improving our understanding of fluid turbulence, and developing 
techniques for reliably estimating the errors in simulations of complex 
physical phenomena.
    In addition to the existing research topics described, MICS plans 
to invest in new areas of applied mathematics research to support DOE's 
mission. Such investments may include research in multiscale 
algorithms, the mathematics of feature identification in large 
datasets, asymptotically optimal algorithms for solving PDEs, fast 
multipole and related hybrid methods, and algorithms for handling 
complex systems with constraints. The MICS research portfolio in 
Applied Mathematics emphasizes investment in long-term research that 
will result in the next generation of computational tools for 
scientific discovery.

Computer Science Research

    The objective of the computer science component of the MICS 
research portfolio is to support research that results in a 
comprehensive, scalable, and robust high performance software 
infrastructure that translates the promise and potential of high peak 
performance to real performance improvements in DOE scientific 
applications. This software infrastructure must address needs for: 
portability and interoperability of complex high performance scientific 
software packages; operating systems tools and support for the 
effective management of terascale and beyond systems; and effective 
tools for feature identification, data management and visualization of 
petabyte-scale scientific data sets. The Computer Science component 
encompasses a multi-discipline approach with activities in:
     Program development environments and tools--Component-
based, fully integrated, terascale program development and runtime 
tools, which scale effectively and provide maximum performance, 
functionality and ease-of-use to developers and scientific end users.
     Operating system software and tools--Systems software that 
scales to tens of thousands of processors, supports high performance 
application-level communication and provides the highest levels of 
performance, fault tolerance, reliability, manageability, and ease of 
use for system administrators, tool developers and end users.
     Visualization and data management systems--Scalable, 
intuitive systems fully supportive of DOE application requirements for 
moving, storing, analyzing, querying, manipulating and visualizing 
multi-petabytes of scientific data and objects.
     Problem Solving Environments--Unified systems focused on 
the needs of specific scientific applications, which enable radically 
improved ease-of-use of complex systems software and tools by domain 
application scientists.
    The MICS research portfolio in Computer Science emphasizes 
investment in long-term research that will result in the next 
generation of high performance tools for scientific discovery.

High-Performance Networks Research

    Scientists working in teams on emerging complex energy problems 
involving the fundamental building blocks of life and matter are 
increasingly dependent on advanced networking to harness the 
capabilities of geographically distributed science facilities and data 
resources. Networks enable access to distributed terascale computing 
facilities and remote instrumentation, provide a medium for large-scale 
scientific collaboration between distributed teams, and make remote 
visualization possible. Unlike today's commodity Internet, optimized 
for low-speed commercial applications, networks used to support science 
infrastructures are high-speed and high-performance networks capable of 
delivering and sustaining multi-Gigabits/sec to high-end data intensive 
applications and of providing transparent security to end users.
    These networks should be amenable to dynamically controllable end-
to-end performance and differentiated services. Designers developing 
networks with these capabilities are faced with the challenge of:
     Developing high-performance transport protocols that 
deliver and sustain multi-gigabits/sec to scientific applications.
     Understanding and characterizing large traffic flows 
generated by single

[[Page 2423]]

sources and their impact on aggregate traffic in the core networks.
     Developing innovative formal techniques for estimating the 
robustness of proactive secure systems.
     Developing network-aware middleware services and toolkits 
that couple scientific applications to networks.
    This announcement calls for proposals to address the fundamental 
issues of high-performance networks that support DOE's science mission. 
It focuses on four major topics: (1) High-throughput transport 
protocols, (2) traffic engineering and characterization, (3) cyber-
security science and engineering, and (4) modeling of network-aware 
middleware and middleboxes (firewalls, NAT, proxies, etc.) deployed in 
networks to perform functions other than standard routing functions. 
Responses to this announcement must go beyond the development of tools 
and software to an emphasis on rigorous techniques and proofs for 
analyzing and validating the performance of the proposed approaches.
    The focus of this announcement is on the fundamental issues of 
networking technologies that address these challenges.

Background: Early Career Principal Investigator Program

    This is the first year of the Early Career Principal Investigator 
Program. A principal goal of this program is to identify exceptionally 
talented applied mathematicians, computer scientists and high-
performance networks researchers early in their careers and assist and 
facilitate the development of their research programs. Eligibility for 
awards under this notice is restricted to tenure-track regular academic 
faculty investigators, who are no more than five years beyond 
completing either a Ph.D., or equivalent, or a postdoctoral position, 
and are conducting research in applied mathematics, computer science, 
or high-performance networks. Applications should be submitted through 
a U.S. academic institution. Applicants should request support under 
this notice for normal research project costs as required to conduct 
their proposed research activities. However, no salary support will be 
provided for other faculty members or senior personnel.
    It is anticipated that up to $4 million will be available for grant 
awards during Fiscal Year 2002, contingent upon the availability of 
appropriated funds. DOE expects to make up to forty (40) awards for 
exceptional applications in Fiscal Year 2002, to meet the needs of the 
program. Multiple-year funding of grant awards is expected, with 
funding provided on an annual basis subject to the availability of 
funds. The typical duration of these grants is three years, and they 
will not normally be renewed after the project period has been 
completed. It is anticipated that at the end of the grant period, 
grantees will submit new grant applications to continue their research 
to DOE or other Federal funding agencies.

Merit Review

    Applications will be subjected to scientific merit review (peer 
review) and will be evaluated against the following evaluation 
criteria, which are listed in descending order of importance as 
codified at 10 CFR 605.10(d):
    (1) Scientific and/or Technical Merit of the Project;
    (2) Appropriateness of the Proposed Method or Approach;
    (3) Competency of Applicant's Personnel and Adequacy of Proposed 
Resources;
    (4) Reasonableness and Appropriateness of the Proposed Budget.
    The evaluation of applications under item 1, Scientific and 
Technical Merit, will pay attention to the responsiveness of the 
proposed research to the research challenges of the MICS base research 
programs in Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, and Network 
Research.
    It is expected that the application will include involvement of 
graduate and/or undergraduate students in the proposed work.
    Applicants are encouraged to collaborate with DOE National 
Laboratory researchers. The collaborations may include one, or more, 
extended visits to the laboratory by the applicant each year. Such an 
arrangement, if proposed, must be clearly explained in the grant 
application. Furthermore, a letter of support from the DOE National 
Laboratory collaborator(s) should be included with the application. A 
list of the DOE National Laboratories can be found at: http://
www.sc.doe.gov/sub/lab__map/index.htm.
    Grantees under the Early Career Principal Investigator Program may 
apply for access to high-performance computing and network resources at 
several National Laboratories. Such resources include, but are not 
limited to, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) 
Center: http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/octr/mics/nersc/index.html; 
the Advanced Computing Research Testbeds http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/octr/mics/acrt/index.html; the Energy Sciences Network 
http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/octr/mics/esnet/index.html; and the 
High-Performance Networking Research effort at the Oak Ridge National 
Laboratory; http://www.csm.ornl.gov/net.
    The evaluation under item 2, Appropriateness of the Proposed Method 
or Approach, will consider the quality of the proposed plan, if any, 
for interacting with a DOE National Laboratory.
    Please note that external peer reviewers are selected with regard 
to both their scientific expertise and the absence of conflict-of-
interest issues. Non-federal reviewers will often be used, and 
submission of an application constitutes agreement that this is 
acceptable to the investigator and the submitting institution.

Submission Information

    The Project Description should be 20 pages or less, exclusive of 
attachments. It must contain an abstract or project summary on a 
separate page with the name of the applicant, mailing address, phone, 
FAX and E-mail listed, and a short curriculum vita for the applicant.
    To provide a consistent format for the submission, review, and 
solicitation of grant applications under this notice, the preparation 
and submission of grant applications must follow the guidelines given 
in the Application Guide for the Office of Science Financial Assistance 
Program, 10 CFR part 605. Access to SC's Financial Assistance 
Application Guide is possible via the World Wide Web at: http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html. DOE is under no 
obligation to pay for any costs associated with the preparation or 
submission of applications if an award is not made.

The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance number for this program 
is 81.049, and the solicitation control number is ERFAP 10 CFR part 
605.

    Issued in Washington, DC on January 11, 2002.
John Rodney Clark,
Associate Director of Science for Resource Management.
[FR Doc. 02-1227 Filed 1-16-02; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6450-02-U