[Federal Register Volume 68, Number 218 (Wednesday, November 12, 2003)]
[Notices]
[Pages 64092-64095]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 03-28318]


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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY


Office of Science Financial Assistance Program Notice DE-FG01-
04ER04-05; Early Career Principal Investigator Program in Applied 
Mathematics, Collaboratory Research, Computer Science, and High-
Performance Networks

AGENCY: Department of Energy.

ACTION: Notice inviting grant applications.

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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 grant applications 
in support of its Early Career Principal Investigator Program. The 
purpose of this program is to support research in applied mathematics, 
collaboratory research, computer science, and networks performed by 
exceptionally talented scientists and engineers early in their careers. 
The full text of Program Notice DE-FG01-04ER04-05, 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 2004, 
completed applications in response to this notice must be received by 
February 10, 2004, to be accepted for merit review and funding in 
Fiscal Year 2004.

ADDRESSES: Formal applications referencing Program Notice DE-FG01-
04ER04-05 must be sent electronically by an authorized institutional 
business official through DOE's Industry Interactive Procurement System 
(IIPS) at: http://e-center.doe.gov/. IIPS provides for the posting of 
solicitations and receipt of applications in a paperless environment 
via the Internet. In order to submit applications through IIPS, your 
business official will need to register at the IIPS website. IIPS 
offers the option of using multiple files, please limit submissions to 
one volume and one file if possible, with a maximum of no more than 
four PDF files. The Office of Science will include attachments as part 
of this notice that provide the appropriate forms in PDF fillable 
format that are to be submitted through IIPS. Color images should be 
submitted in IIPS as a separate file in PDF format and identified as 
such. These images should be kept to a minimum due to the limitations 
of reproducing them. They should be numbered and referred to in the 
body of the technical scientific grant application as Color imagea 1, 
Color image 2, etc. Questions regarding the operation of IIPS may be E-
mailed to the IIPS Help Desk at: [email protected], or you may call 
the help desk at: (800) 683-0751. Further information on the use of 
IIPS by the Office of Science is available at: http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html.
    If you are unable to submit an application through IIPS, please 
contact the Grants and Contracts Division, Office of Science at: (301) 
903-5212 or (301) 903-3604, in order to gain assistance for submission 
through IIPS or to receive special approval and instructions on how to 
submit printed applications.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT: Dr. Samuel J. Barish, Office of 
Advanced Scientific Computing Research, SC-31/Germantown Building, U.S. 
Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 
20585-1290, Telephone: (301) 903-5800, E-mail: 
[email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Program Mission

    The mission of the Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program 
is to deliver forefront computational and networking capabilities to 
scientists nationwide that enable them to extend the frontiers of 
science, answering critical questions that range from the function of 
living cells to the power of fusion energy.
    In order to accomplish this mission, this program fosters and 
supports fundamental research in advanced computing research (applied 
mathematics, computer science and networking), and operates 
supercomputer, networking, and related facilities to enable the 
analysis, modeling, simulation, and prediction of complex phenomena 
important to DOE.
    The following long-term goals will be indicators of ASCR's success 
in meeting its mission:
    [sbull] Develop mathematics, algorithms, and software that enable 
effective models of complex systems, including highly nonlinear or 
uncertain phenomena, or processes that interact on vastly different 
scales or contain both discrete and continuous elements.
    [sbull] Develop, through the Genomes to Life partnership with the 
DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research, the computational 
science capability to model a complete microbe and a simple microbial 
community.
    The primary mission of the ASCR program is carried out by the 
Mathematical, Information, and Computational Sciences (MICS) Division. 
This Division is responsible for discovering, developing, and deploying 
advanced scientific computing and communications tools and operating 
the high performance computing and network facilities that researchers 
need to analyze, model, simulate, and--most importantly--predict the 
behavior of complex natural and engineered systems of importance to SC 
and to DOE.
    The computing, networking middleware required to meet SC needs 
exceed the state-of-the-art by a wide margin. Furthermore, the 
algorithms, the software tools, the software libraries, and the 
distributed software environments needed to accelerate scientific 
discovery through modeling and simulation are beyond the realm of 
commercial interest. To establish and maintain DOE's modeling and 
simulation leadership in scientific areas that are important to its 
mission, the MICS program employs a broad, but integrated, research 
strategy. The basic research portfolio in applied mathematics and 
computer science provides the foundation for enabling research 
activities, which includes efforts to advance high-performance 
networking, to develop software tools, software libraries, and software 
environments. Results from enabling research supported by the MICS 
program are used by computational scientists supported by other SC and 
other DOE programs.
    Further descriptions of the base research portion of the MICS 
portfolio, which is the scope of this Notice, are 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,

[[Page 64093]]

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 
(PDEs) 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.

Collaboratory Research

    Collaboratories link geographically dispersed researchers, data, 
and tools via high performance networks to enable remote access to 
facilities, access to large datasets, shared environments, and ease of 
collaboration. The objective of the collaboratory component of the MICS 
portfolio is to support research for developing the software 
infrastructure that will enable universal, ubiquitous, easy access to 
remote resources or that will contribute to the ease with which 
distributed teams work together. Enabling high performance for 
distributed scientific applications is an important consideration. The 
middleware component for collaboratories encompasses activities in:
    [sbull] Building the application frameworks that allow discipline 
scientists to express and manage the simulation, analysis, and data 
management aspects of overall problem solving.
    [sbull] Supporting construction, management, and use of widely 
distributed application systems.
    [sbull] Facilitating human collaboration through common security 
services, and resource and data sharing.
    [sbull] Providing remote access to, and operation of, scientific 
and engineering instrumentation systems.
    [sbull] Managing and securing the computing and data infrastructure 
as a persistent service.
    This announcement also calls for grant applications to address the 
fundamental issues involved in providing uniform software services that 
manage and provide access to heterogeneous, distributed resources, that 
is, high-performance middleware services that support DOE's science 
mission. The emphasis is on investment in long-term research that will 
result in the next generation of high-performance software 
infrastructure 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:
    [sbull] 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.
    [sbull] 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.
    [sbull] 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.
    [sbull] 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

    In the next few years, complex science experiments in DOE are 
expected to generate several petabytes of data that will be transferred 
to geographically distributed terascale computing facilities for 
analysis and visualization by thousands of scientists across the world. 
In addition, many emerging energy research problems require coordinated 
access to distributed resources--people, data, computers, and 
facilities. This emerging, distributed terascale-science environment 
calls for ultra-high-speed networks--networks that can deliver multi-
gigabits/sec throughput to scientific applications securely. Grant 
applications in network research must therefore address the issues of 
ultra high-speed networks by focusing on:
    [sbull] Ultra high-speed network protocols--innovative, new 
approaches to transport protocols and dynamic provisioning technologies 
for ultra-high-speed networks that will enable large-scale distributed 
science applications to efficiently harness the abundant bandwidth made 
possible by Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical 
technologies. For ultra-high-speed transport protocols, this may 
include, but is not limited to, significant modifications to existing 
transport protocols, such as UDP, TCP, TCP variants, and TCP 
alternatives that can deliver multi-gigabit throughput to high-end 
scientific applications. For dynamic provisioning, the focus is on 
advanced network technologies for agile DWDM networking that offer 
bandwidth on-demand, scheduled end-to-end bandwidth, differentiated 
DWDM services, and DWDM traffic engineering. Respondents must address 
the theoretical foundations of the proposed work with rigorous 
mathematical and algorithm principles.
    [sbull] Performance evaluation of cyber security systems--formal 
techniques for modeling and evaluating the performance and 
effectiveness of cyber security systems and policies. This may include 
techniques for formal specification of cyber security requirements and 
implementation.
    [sbull] Ultra-high-speed network services--advanced network-aware 
services that enable the efficient, effective, and secure utilization 
of ultra-

[[Page 64094]]

high-speed networks for data transfers over long distances.
    [sbull] Optimization techniques for complex networks--advanced 
stochastic optimization techniques that can be used to characterize 
complex traffic processes in large-scale networks. This may include, 
but is not limited to, computational intelligence, chaos theory, large-
scale simulations, and multi-scale theory.
    Grant applications addressing the above problems must go beyond the 
development of tools and emphasize mathematical analysis, formal 
specification, and rigorous techniques for validating the performance 
of their proposed solutions.

Background: Early Career Principal Investigator Program

    This is the third year of the Early Career Principal Investigator 
Program. A principal goal of this program is to identify exceptionally 
talented applied mathematicians, collaboratory researchers, 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 
applicants who meet all of the following criteria:
    (1) Be employed in a tenure-track position (or tenure-track-
equivalent position) as an assistant professor (or equivalent title).
    (2) Are conducting research in applied mathematics, 
collaboratories, 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, such as part of the PI's salary, graduate and/or 
undergraduate students, post-doctoral researchers, equipment and 
facilities, and travel. However, no salary support will be provided for 
other faculty members or senior personnel.
    Applicants who have submitted or will be submitting similar grant 
applications to other programs are eligible for this notice, as long as 
the details of the other submission are contained in the grant 
application to DOE. Applicants who have an NSF CAREER award, or are 
applying for such an award, are eligible for this notice. Applicants do 
not have to be U.S. citizens, and may be non-permanent resident aliens 
or have an H1b visa.

Program Funding

    It is anticipated that up to $2 million will be available for up to 
twenty (20) awards for exceptional applications in Fiscal Year 2004, to 
meet the needs of the program, contingent upon the availability of 
appropriated funds. The maximum support that can be requested under 
this notice is $100,000 per year for three years.
    Multiple-year funding of grant awards is expected, with funding 
provided on an annual basis subject to the availability of funds, 
progress of the research, and programmatic needs. 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. We expect that the awards will be announced and the projects 
will begin in early summer 2004.

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 challenges of the MICS base research programs 
in Applied Mathematics, Collaboratory Research, 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/ascr/mics/nersc/index.html; the Advanced 
Computing Research Testbeds http://www.sc.doe.gov/ascr/mics/acrt/index.html; the Energy Sciences Network http://www.sc.doe.gov/ascr/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 in the subject area of the grant 
application 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

    Each grant application submitted should clearly indicate on which 
of the four following components of the MICS research portfolio the 
application is focused: Applied Mathematical Sciences Research, 
Collaboratory Research, Computer Science Research, or High-Performance 
Networks Research.
    The Project Description should be 20 pages or less, exclusive of 
the bibliography and other 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

[[Page 64095]]

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 November 3, 2003.
John Rodney Clark,
Associate Director of Science for Resource Management.
[FR Doc. 03-28318 Filed 11-10-03; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6450-01-P