Jean-Luc Vay, a senior scientist and head of the Advanced Modeling Program (AMP) in the Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), was one of 21 Berkeley Lab staff awarded the Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary of Energy Achievement Award.
The award, presented at a ceremony on January 8, 2025, at the DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C., recognizes the nearly 200 staff from the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) leadership team’s contributions to its successful delivery. This seven-year, $1.8 billion collaboration involved six DOE national laboratories and nearly 3,000 multidisciplinary researchers and staff and led to the development of the world’s first sustainable exascale computing ecosystem, providing breakthrough solutions for fundamental scientific research and helping to address future challenges in energy security, healthcare, and security.
Jointly managed by the DOE Office of Science’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research program and the National Nuclear Security Administration, with leadership from Argonne, Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Sandia National Laboratories, the ECP led to the development and enhancement of 25 scientific application codes that provide groundbreaking simulation results on exascale computers. Additionally, the project produced over 70 exascale-capable software products as part of an integrated package widely utilized by the high-performance computing (HPC) community. This package includes the award-winning WarpX application, a plasma physics “Particle-in-Cell” code that accurately simulates the full complexity of acceleration processes in plasma-based accelerators, developed by an international team of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians led by Vay.
Senior Scientist and Head of ATAP’s Advanced Modeling Program Jean-Luc Vay. (Credit: Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab)
Commenting on the Secretary of Energy Achievement Award, Vay said, “It is a tremendous honor and recognition of the teamwork that has spanned many years. I feel very grateful and proud of the work the WarpX team has accomplished in collaboration with the AMReX team and our partners from Berkeley Lab, SLAC, Lawrence Livermore, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, as well as our contribution to the success of the ECP project. The software developed during the ECP continues to evolve and is the backbone of our ongoing and future research activities.”
According to the ECP management team, the ECP’s legacy will be felt for decades through its delivered products, trained staff, and best practices in leading large, collaborative RD&D software projects. The ECP’s achievements, including application codes, software tools, and libraries, have been shared with the HPC community through electronic media, workshops, and training events.
Capitalizing on the successes and foundations laid with WarpX, Vay’s AMP program has been modernizing the Beam, Plasma & Accelerator Simulation Toolkit, a suite of codes and standards developed by an international collaboration led by AMP. This effort is the seed for a new U.S. Center for Accelerator & Beam Physics Theory & Simulations, proposed by Vay to modernize and coordinate the U.S. modeling efforts in accelerator and beam physics. This, says Vay, is a “much-needed endeavor to adapt the ecosystem to the new exascale and machine learning era.”
Commenting on the Secretary of Energy Achievement Award, ATAP Division Director Cameron Geddes said, “The award is a testament to the hard work, dedication, and collaborative effort that Jean-Luc and the ECP leadership team have put in over the years. The ECP, along with the software tools and applications developed from it, is helping to enhance the capabilities and performance of today’s accelerators and is advancing the development of next-generation accelerator technologies for breakthrough science.”
The other Berkeley Lab awardees included Daniel Martin, Osni Marques, Phil Colella, John Bell, John Shalf, Suren Byna, Sherry Li, and Paul Hargrove (Applied Mathematics and Computational Research Division); Nick Sauter (BioSciences Area); Jonathan Carter and Kathy Yelick (Computing Science Area); Carl Steefel and David McCallen (Earth and Environmental Sciences Area); Debbie Bard, Jack Deslippe, Katie Antypas, Paul Lin, Richard Gerber, and Shahzeb Siddiqui (National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center); and Dan Kasen (Physics Division).
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