The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $3 million in funding to spur the use of U.S. National Laboratory supercomputing resources to strengthen domestic manufacturing. Under DOE’s High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation (HPC4EI) solicitation, competitively-selected project teams will work with the labs to apply advanced modeling, simulation, and data analysis to achieve energy, material, and cost savings in manufacturing.

“Bolstering domestic manufacturing and sustaining American leadership in advanced manufacturing is a top priority for the Trump Administration,” said Alex Fitzsimmons, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency. “President Trump’s recent launch of the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium demonstrates the Administration’s support for high performance computing resources to advance the pace of scientific discovery, which will be critical to America’s economic recovery.”

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the managing entity of the HPC4EI initiative, is looking for industry partners to make advancements in the following topic areas:

• Improvements in manufacturing processes that result in significant national energy savings: This includes process improvements for high-energy consuming industries; material performance in harsh service environments; advanced object recognition and machine learning algorithm integration; modeling prediction and closed-loop control for smart manufacturing systems; and separation and processing for critical materials.
• Improvements in the lifecycle energy consumption of products of interest: This includes jet engine efficiency; materials and shape optimization for light-weighting in transport technologies; semiconductor electrical efficiency; and recycling and reuse for industrial-scale materials production and processing waste.
• Efficiency improvements in energy conversion and storage technologies: This includes combined heat and power units; novel energy storage and energy conversion techniques; and waste heat recovery.

The High Performance Computing for Manufacturing program, one component of HPC4EI, offers a path for U.S. manufacturing companies to broaden the use of advanced computing technology to increase the sector’s energy efficiency and material productivity. Eligibility for the program is limited to entities that manufacture products or operate systems in the U.S. for commercial applications and organizations that support them.

Applicants to this solicitation are highly encouraged to partner with universities and non-profit organizations located within federally designated Opportunity Zones and/or Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Selected projects will be awarded up to $300,000 to support computing cycles and work performed by DOE National Laboratories, universities, and non-profit partners.

All DOE National Laboratories are eligible to participate. The industry partner must provide a participant contribution of at least 20% of the total project funding. The deadline for concept papers is Tuesday, June 9, 2020. 

Learn more about this funding opportunity, and register to attend the upcoming webinars on Thursday, May 14, 2020 or Wednesday, May 20, 2020.

Learn more about the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, including how to submit a separate proposal for the program