University Partnerships

The Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program

Enabling scientists to make precise statements about the degree of confidence they have in their simulation-based predictions

The Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program (PSAAP) centers focus on the emerging field of predictive science—the application of verified and validated computational simulations to predict the behavior of complex systems where routine experiments are not feasible.

The centers focus on unclassified applications of interest to NNSA and its three national laboratories: LLNL, LANL, and SNL.

The PSAAP centers develop the science and engineering models and software for their large-scale simulations, as well as employing best practices of verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification. A crucial new aspect of their work, in the current phase of the program, is computer science research aimed at addressing the major challenges of data movement, parallel scaling, resiliency, and power consumption in emerging high-performance computing hardware.

The goal of such research is to make the most effective use of next-generation computers, which will be of completely unprecedented scale and complexity, but which promise to allow revolutionary advances in physical fidelity and accuracy.

PSAAP centers

• University of Florida: Center for Multiscale Modeling of Multiphase Combustion
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Center for the Exascale Simulation of Coupled High Enthalpy Fluid-Solid Interactions
• University of Michigan: Center for AI-enabled Exascale Prediction of Long-time Events in Multimaterial Shock-assisted Chemical Reactions
• Oregon State University: Center for Advancing the Radiation Resilience of Electronics
• University of Virginia: Center for Stochastic Simulations of Ablative Geometries with Error-Learning in Space and Time

Trilab Support Team

Each of the six university centers has its own Trilab Support Team (TST), consisting of NNSA laboratory researchers who act as liaisons with the centers. Each of the three NNSA laboratories provides two members to each TST. The Los Alamos TST members are:

University of Florida
Angela Herring
Chris Malone

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jon Reisner
George Stelle

University of Michigan
Eduardo Lozano
Tarun Prabhu

Oregon State University
Sriram Swaminarayan
Tim Burke

University of Virginia
Ben Bergen
Jim Ferguson