ASCEND

ASCEND (Applied mathematics and Scientific Computing Ecosystem for the New Digital era) is a portfolio of projects funding by the DOE, Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, that consists of research and development in computational and applied mathematics seeking to address foundational research gaps in the digital twin ecosystem. Breakthroughs are needed to realize this new digital era. The ASCEND vision is to lay the mathematical and computational foundations that address research challenges and deliver breakthroughs in the following areas: high-fidelity forward models that encompass unprecedented time/length scales and physics complexity, algorithms to push beyond forward simulation that are scalable and risk-informed, and methods that can leverage modern heterogeneous scientific computing architectures. We accomplish this through a regional partnership between the three principal research institutions in New Mexico: Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, and the University of New Mexico.

The ASCEND portfolio consists of five research thrusts in applied mathematics: advanced discretizations and linear solvers, multiscale and multiphysics methods, optimization, uncertainty quantification, and randomized algorithms and tensors. The research is motivated by fundamental challenges in modeling digital twins and focuses on a broadly-scoped exemplar that is of fundamental importance to the DOE: fusion/plasma physics. The ASCEND vision includes building the workforce of the future that is diverse and equipped with the interdisciplinary skills to meet our research challenges. We will leverage our geographic proximity to promote close collaboration.

Contact

Tim Wildey, tmwilde@sandia.gov