The PSAAP Program

The PECOS Center was created with funding from the Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program (PSAAP) at the Department of Energy. The PSAAP program is a follow-on to the previous Alliance Program of the Advanced Simulation and Computing program (ASC) of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) at the Department of Energy.

The primary goal of the PSAAP program is to establish validated, large-scale, multidisciplinary, simulation-based “Predictive Science” as a major academic and applied research program. Predictive science is understood to be the application of verified and validated computational simulations to predict the behavior of complex systems.  This approach to using advanced simulation for predictive science is broadly applicable to complex systems such as global climate, economics and advanced energy infrastructure.

The DOE ASC program has funded centers at five universities to advance the PSAAP goals, including the PECOS Center at the University of Texas. The other four are:

• The Center for the Predictive Modeling and Simulation of High-Energy Density Dynamic Response of Materials at the California Institute of Technology
• The Center for Radiative Shock Hydrodynamics (CRASH) at the University of Michigan
• The Center for Prediction of Reliability, Integrity and Survivability of Microsystems (PRISM) at Purdue University
• PSAAP@Stanford at Staford University