Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences

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Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences

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Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences area operates two Dept. The Computing Sciences organization was created to advance computational science throughout the U.S.

of Energy national user facilities — NERSC & ESnet — as well as conducts research in computer science, computational science and applied math to achieve transformational breakthroughs in science. Berkeley Lab's Computing Sciences organization researches, develops, and deploys new tools and technologies to advance research in such areas as global climate change, combustion, fusion energy, nanotechnology, biology, and astrophysics. Department of Energy's Office of Science research programs. The organization includes:

The Computational Research Division (CRD)

CRD creates computational tools and techniques that enable scientific breakthroughs by conducting applied research and development in computer science, computational science, and applied mathematics. http://crd.lbl.gov/

The National Energy Research Scientific Research Computing (NERSC) Center

NERSC is home to some of the world’s most efficient supercomputers. This center is a leader in providing systems, services and expertise to advance computational science throughout the Department of Energy research community. http://www.nersc.gov/

The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)

ESnet provides high-bandwidth, reliable connections to researchers at national laboratories, universities and other institutions, across the United States. These world-class connections provide the collaborative capabilities needed to address some of the world’s most important scientific challenges. http://www.es.net/

10/13/2026

Congratulations to Berkeley Lab senior scientist Samuel Williams on receiving the DOE’s E.O. Lawrence Award! 🏆

Recognized for his transformative work on the globally adopted Roofline Model and leading efforts in hardware/software co-design, he ensures the world’s supercomputers run at peak efficiency. 💡💻

Learn more about his exceptional contributions to computer, information, and knowledge sciences at the link in the comments. 👇

10/09/2026

"What drew me to the Hopper Fellowship was the freedom to pursue open-source research in a setting that's well-equipped — not just intellectually, but in terms of resources, especially the computing power to run the experiments I want to run."

Meet Alex Morehead, our 2025 Hopper Fellow. Alex is building a foundation model that can generate new molecular structures — ambitious work that requires serious computing power. He has access to the high-performance computing infrastructure, expertise, and support he needs to train and refine his models.

As a Hopper Fellow, Alex receives a highly competitive salary, mentorship from senior scientists at Berkeley Lab, and the freedom to shape his own research direction within the Lab's Computing Sciences Area, which spans computer science, mathematics, data science, and high-performance computing.

Want to join the Lab? Applications are open for both Luis W. Alvarez and Admiral Grace M. Hopper Postdoctoral Fellowships in Computing Sciences. Apply by October 30.

10/08/2026

Congratulations to Berkeley Lab's Marcus Michael Noack on receiving a 2026 U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award! 🏆 🎉
Super Intelligence (SI), commonly referred to as artificial intelligence (AI), has a confidence problem. Commercial SI tools often make blind guesses with false confidence—a serious issue when steering a fusion reactor or designing new materials. Noack aims to fix that. 🧠 💡
Backed by this new award, he is building a new kind of physics-informed SI for scientific research: one that actually calculates its own uncertainty. His project will upgrade Gaussian processes to process complex, messy scientific data natively, scale on DOE supercomputers, and strictly obey the laws of physics.
Ultimately, these high-speed algorithms will be integrated into his open-source platform, gpCAM, to drive reliable autonomous experiments across the scientific complex. 🤖
Learn more about his work at the link in comments 👇

cc:

10/02/2026

"This fellowship gives me the support to pursue ambitious ideas at the intersection of mathematics and chemistry, and it's an exciting opportunity to contribute to the scientific community at Berkeley Lab."

Meet Mark Fornace, our 2025 Alvarez Fellow. Building on his own doctoral work, Mark is collaborating with Berkeley Lab staff to develop rigorous, computationally efficient methods for tackling big questions in chemical kinetics.

As an Alvarez Fellow, Mark receives a highly competitive salary, mentorship from senior scientists at Berkeley Lab, and the freedom to shape his own research direction within the Lab's Computing Sciences Area, which spans computer science, mathematics, data science, and high-performance computing.

Want to join the Lab? Applications are open for both Luis W. Alvarez and Admiral Grace M. Hopper Postdoctoral Fellowships in Computing Sciences. Apply by October 30.

Learn more: https://phxc1b.rfer.us/LBLNSSHND

10/01/2026

After nearly three decades, Paul Hargrove is retiring from Berkeley Lab. Please join us in wishing him a very happy retirement! 🎊
He initially took a summer job with the Lab in 1999, fully expecting to “do this and get out” once he’d paid his rent. Instead, he stayed for 27 years, becoming a key architect of GASNet, a foundational communication layer that empowers scientists to utilize massive exascale supercomputers. 🖥️
Read the full story of how his quiet hobby grew into a lasting legacy in HPC at the link in comments. ⬇️

09/30/2026

Behind every scientific breakthrough is code — and often, a Research Software Engineer making sure it actually works.

We talked with Keith Beattie of Berkeley Lab's Scientific Software Engineering Group about the role and his team helps scientists focus on discovering new ideas, not debugging their software. Their work spans dark matter research, quantum computing, and more.

Keith is co-leading the US-RSE conference Oct 19–21 in San Jose — "Advancing Science in the Age of AI" — with 72 talks and a growing community of 4,000+ RSEs.

Learn more about the role of the Research Software Engineer and how to get involved in this community: https://cs.lbl.gov/news-and-events/news/2026/expert-insights-keith-beattie/

09/17/2026

Ready, set, SLAM! 🕹️ Support our Computing Sciences postdocs as they join a fantastic lineup of 12 early-career scientists taking the stage at the 2026 Berkeley Lab Research SLAM.
Anupam Mitra will discuss "Tuning into a Quantum Magnet," and Durga Keerthi Mandarapu will explore "Are Your Fluffy Dogs as Unpredictable as my Computer Programs?"
📅 Join us on Wednesday, September 23, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. in the Building 50 Auditorium.
🏆 If you attend in person, you can cast your vote for the People’s Choice Award!
💻 Can't make it to the auditorium? You can still support our researchers virtually by tuning in at streaming.lbl.gov.
🎉 Keep the energy going at the reception immediately following the talks on the 3rd floor of B91 IGB.
It is the perfect opportunity to honor all of our SLAM participants and celebrate National Postdoc Appreciation Week together.

09/14/2026

⚛️ Predicting how electrons behave in quantum materials is one of the greatest computational challenges in modern physics. To solve this, Berkeley Lab researchers have developed Σ-Attention (Sigma-Attention), a highly scalable new AI framework.
🧠 By adapting the same transformer architecture that powers modern LLMs, the team trained their AI on a combination of three traditional quantum simulation techniques. Instead of predicting the next word in a sentence, Σ-Attention learns to predict “self-energy,” a mathematical function capturing how strongly correlated electrons interact and influence one another.
⚡ Traditional computational methods force researchers to trade off between accuracy and system size. Σ-Attention breaks this barrier by accurately predicting collective electron behavior across various conditions while drastically reducing the required computing power. This breakthrough allows scientists to simulate much larger, more realistic quantum materials, paving the way for next-generation technologies like lossless power transmission, advanced quantum sensors, and ultra-efficient computing.
Learn more in comments ⬇️
(📸: Hardware of a current quantum computer, the exact kind of technology Σ-Attention will help advance.)

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09/08/2026

Did you know that Berkeley Lab is seeking early-career scientists for the prestigious Luis W. Alvarez and Admiral Grace M. Hopper Postdoctoral Fellowships?
As a fellow, you will push the boundaries of extreme-scale computing, pioneer next-generation AI, and design mathematical models to tackle global challenges in fields ranging from materials science to quantum computing.
You will have unparalleled access to world-class facilities—including NERSC supercomputers and the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) high-speed network—empowering you to perform independent research that shapes the future of technology. If you are earning a Ph.D. in computer science, mathematics, data science, or a related computational discipline by October 1, 2027, a single application puts you in the running for both of these highly competitive roles.
Read the full fellowship details in the comments ⬇️, and submit your application by October 30, 2026.

cc: U.S. Department of Energy

09/01/2026

New optical materials hold the key to the next generation of quantum computers, sensors, and solar panels, but understanding their behavior at the microscopic level requires massive computational power. 🔬💻
In a new paper, researchers from Berkeley Lab and the University of Southern California have successfully simulated complex optical materials at an unprecedented scale of 10,000 atoms to uncover exotic quantum phenomena from first principles. By using the BerkeleyGW software package—optimized with support from the NERSC Science Acceleration Program (NESAP)—the team created a powerful new computational framework to study phenomena such as Wigner-crystalline excitons. ⚛️
Berkeley Lab's Mauro Del Ben notes that this accomplishment allows researchers to explain these exotic quantum phenomena and pushes predictive computational capabilities for quantum technologies even further.
As the team looks ahead, they are already planning to leverage AI, mixed-precision algorithms, and NERSC’s upcoming flagship supercomputer, Doudna, to continue expanding this critical research.
Learn more at the links in the comments. ⬇️

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Address

1 Cyclotron Road
Berkeley, CA
94704

Website

http://cs.lbl.gov/

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