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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2018

Community Organizations: Changing the Culture in Which Research Software Is Developed and Sustained

Software is the key crosscutting technology that enables advances in mathematics, computer science, and domain-specific science and engineering to achieve robust simulations and analysis for science, engineering, and other research fields. However, software itself has not traditionally received focused attention from research communities; rather, software has evolved organically and inconsistently, with its development largely as by-products of other initiatives. Moreover, challenges in scientific software are expanding due to disruptive changes in computer hardware, increasing scale and complexity of data, and demands for more complex simulations involving multiphysics, multiscale modeling and outer-loop analysis. In recent years, community members have established a range of grass-roots organizations and projects to address these growing technical and social challenges in software productivity, quality, reproducibility, and sustainability. This article provides an overview of such groups and discusses opportunities to leverage their synergistic activities while nurturing work toward emerging software ecosystems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Enabling a Voice Management System for Space Applications, Design and Software Development

Sustainable missions, beyond low Earth orbit, will require autonomous capabilities in order to achieve NASA’s Artemis program objectives. Correspondingly, the crew must have a means to efficiently interact with these autonomous systems; this can be facilitated via voice and speech communications. Voice-based controls enable the user to access autonomous systems hands-free/eyes-free, allowing the user to better focus on critical tasks. The goal of this project was to explore the knowledge and technology needed to successfully design effective voice interfaces for autonomous systems. The main objective was to understand how a crew member, through voice interaction, could most efficiently and intuitively communicate with a notional autonomous vehicle system manager. This project leveraged prior research conducted by the University of Michigan’s Bioastronautics and Life Support System (BLiSS) team as part of a NASA Moon to Mars eXploration Systems and Habitation (M2M X-Hab) 2020 Academic Innovation Challenge. The X-Hab 2020 work from the BliSS Team resulted in an intuitive graphical user interface/user experience that was built on an Internet of Things (IOT) platform. The Voice User Interface (VUI) design for the M2M X-Hab 2021 project leveraged this technology and incorporated a voice-based assistant and NASA’s Platform for Autonomous Systems (NPAS) software. This required technologies to convert voice to text, conduct semantic interpretations, and convert responses from the autonomous system to text and to speech; additionally, the background noise environment of spacecraft was assessed, and a relatable personality for the autonomous system to facilitate human-like conversations was created. This work’s success was largely due to the diverse team that included expertise in Space Systems Engineering, Human Computer Interaction, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, and Applied Physics. The differing perspectives fostered elaborate discussions, resulting in the conception of three main interactions: (1) User-System, (2) NPAS-System, and (3) Environment-System. The system developed, i.e. the VUI, had to be unique, efficient, and intuitive; thus, the team crafted a personality for the system to enable human-like conversation. User surveys sent to students and young professionals were used to help determine these personality traits by capturing perspectives and expectations of the “Artemis Generation Astronauts”. To further simulate human-like conversations, the system had to be able to quickly interpret user speech and be able to integrate with NASA’s NPAS system for quick and reliable information transfer. Results of this research include (1) a working prototype user interface, that is compatible with NASA’s NPAS system; (2) software that demonstrates the ability to interpret user requests and respond appropriately; (3) the capability to implement fully expanded conversations between user and system using intuitive communication in four request categories; and (4) software and hardware recommendations that optimize the system’s ability to operate, i.e. be heard, in a noisy environment. The technologies chosen for this project’s demonstrations included the following: Raspberry Pi, RASA, Mozilla Deep Speech, Coqui, RTX Voice and Adobe XD. This work has laid the foundation for the development of VUI’s used for autonomy, and is intended to provide guidance for future VUI development.

Tara Vega↗
DOE OSTI2020

Advancing Scientific Productivity through Better Scientific Software: Developer Productivity and Software Sustainability Report

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP) provides a unique opportunity to advance computational science and engineering (CSE) through an accelerated growth phase in extreme-scale computing. Central to the project is the development of next-generation applications and software technologies that can exploit emerging architectures for optimal performance and provide high-fidelity, multiphysics, multiscale capabilities. However, disruptive changes in computer architectures and the complexities of tackling new frontiers in extreme-scale modeling, simulation, and analysis present daunting challenges to the productivity of software developers and the sustainability of software artifacts. Members of the CSE community - especially at extreme scales but more broadly at all scales of computing - face an urgent need to improve developer productivity, positively impacting product quality, development time, and staffing resources, and software sustainability, reducing the cost of maintaining, sustaining, and evolving software capabilities.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2018

T-infinity: The Dependency Inversion Principle for Rapid and Sustainable Multidisciplinary Software Development

The CFD Vision 2030 Study recommends that, “NASA should develop and maintain an integrated simulation and software development infrastructure to enable rapid CFD technology maturation.... [S]oftware standards and interfaces must be emphasized and supported whenever possible, and open source models for noncritical technology components should be adopted.” The current paper presents an approach to an open source development architecture, named T-infinity, for accelerated research in CFD leveraging the Dependency Inversion Principle to realize plugins that communicate through collections of functions without exposing internal data structures. Steady state flow visualization, mesh adaptation, fluid-structure interaction, and overset domain capabilities are demonstrated through compositions of plugins via standardized abstract interfaces without the need for source code dependencies between disciplines. Plugins interact through abstract interfaces thereby avoiding N 2 direct code-to-code data structure coupling where N is the number of codes. This plugin architecture enhances sustainable development by controlling the interaction between components to limit software complexity growth. The use of T-infinity abstract interfaces enables multidisciplinary application developers to leverage legacy applications alongside newly-developed capabilities. While rein, a description of interface details is deferred until the are more thoroughly tested and can be closed to modification.

O'Connell, Matthew D.↗
DOE OSTI2018

Fourth Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE4)

This article summarizes motivations, organization, and activities of the Fourth Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE4). The WSSSPE series promotes sustainable research software by positively impacting principles and best practices, careers, learning, and credit. This article discusses the code of conduct; the mission and vision statements that were drafted at the workshop and finalized shortly after it; the keynote and idea papers, position papers, experience papers, demos, and lightning talks presented during the workshop; and a panel discussion on best practices. The main part of the article discusses the set of working groups that formed during the meeting, along with contact information for readers who may want to join a group. Lastly, it discusses a survey of the workshop attendees.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Sequenceserver: A Modern Graphical User Interface for Custom BLAST Databases

Comparing newly obtained and previously known nucleotide and amino-acid sequences underpins modern biological research. BLAST is a well-established tool for such comparisons but is challenging to use on new data sets. We combined a user-centric design philosophy with sustainable software development approaches to create Sequenceserver, a tool for running BLAST and visually inspecting BLAST results for biological interpretation. Sequenceserver uses simple algorithms to prevent potential analysis errors and provides flexible text-based and visual outputs to support researcher productivity. Our software can be rapidly installed for use by individuals or on shared servers.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Managing Software Provenance to Enhance Reproducibility in Computational Research

Scientific processes rely on software as an important tool for data acquisition, analysis, and discovery. Over the years, sustainable software development practices have made progress in being considered as an integral component of research. However, management of computation-based scientific studies is often left to individual researchers who design their computational experiments based on personal preferences and the nature of the study. Here, we believe that the quality, efficiency, and reproducibility of computation-based scientific research can be improved by explicitly creating an execution environment that allows researchers to provide a clear record of traceability. This is particularly relevant to complex computational studies in high-performance computing (HPC) environments. In this article, we review the documentation required to maintain a comprehensive record of HPC computational experiments for reproducibility. We also provide an overview of tools and practices that we have developed to perform such studies around Flash-X, a multiphysics scientific software.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Perspective on Sustainable Computational Chemistry Software Development and Integration

The power of quantum chemistry to predict the ground and excited state properties of complex chemical systems has driven the development of computational quantum chemistry software, integrating advances in theory, applied mathematics, and computer science. The emergence of new computational paradigms associated with exascale technologies also poses significant challenges that require a flexible forward strategy to take full advantage of existing and forthcoming computational resources. In this context, the sustainability and interoperability of computational chemistry software development are among the most pressing issues. In this perspective, we discuss software infrastructure needs and investments with an eye to fully utilize exascale resources and provide unique computational tools for next-generation science problems and scientific discoveries.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Giving Research Software Engineers a Larger Stage Through the Better Scientific Software Fellowship

The Better Scientific Software Fellowship (BSSwF) was launched in 2018 to foster and promote practices, processes, and tools to improve developer productivity and software sustainability of scientific codes. The BSSwF’s vision is to grow the community with practitioners, leaders, mentors, and consultants to increase the visibility of scientific software. Over the last five years, many fellowship recipients and honorable mentions have identified as research software engineers (RSEs). Furthermore, case studies from several of the program’s participants illustrate the diverse ways the BSSwF has benefited both the RSE and scientific communities. In an environment where the contributions of RSEs are too often undervalued, we believe that programs such as the BSSwF can help recognize and encourage community members to step outside of their regular commitments and expand on their work, collaborations, and ideas for a larger audience.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

A Cast of Thousands: How the IDEAS Productivity Project Has Advanced Software Productivity and Sustainability

Computational and data-enabled science and engineering are revolutionizing advances throughout science and society, at all scales of computing. For example, teams in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project have been tackling new frontiers in modeling, simulation, and analysis by exploiting unprecedented exascale computing capabilities—building an advanced software ecosystem that supports next-generation applications and addresses disruptive changes in computer architectures. However, concerns are growing about the productivity of the developers of scientific software. Members of the Interoperable Design of Extreme-scale Application Software project serve as catalysts to address these challenges through fostering software communities, incubating and curating methodologies and resources, and disseminating knowledge to advance developer productivity and software sustainability. This article discusses how these synergistic activities are advancing scientific discovery—mitigating technical risks by building a firmer foundation for reproducible, sustainable science at all scales of computing, from laptops to clusters to exascale and beyond.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

DCA++: A software framework to solve correlated electron problems with modern quantum cluster methods

We present the first open release of the DCA++ project, a high-performance research software framework to solve quantum many-body problems with cutting edge quantum cluster algorithms. DCA++ implements the dynamical cluster approximation (DCA) and its DCA extension with a continuous self-energy. The algorithms capture nonlocal correlations in strongly correlated electron systems, thereby giving insight into high-$T_c$ superconductivity. The code’s scalability allows efficient usage of systems at all scales, from workstations to leadership computers. With regard to the increasing heterogeneity of modern computing machines, DCA++ provides portable performance on conventional and emerging new architectures, such as hybrid CPU–GPU, sustaining multiple petaflops on ORNL’s Titan and CSCS’ Piz Daint supercomputers. Moreover, we show how sustainable and scalable development of the code base has been achieved by adopting standard techniques of the software industry. These include employing a distributed version control system, applying test-driven development and following continuous integration.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Then and Now: Improving Software Portability, Productivity, and 100× Performance

The US Exascale Computing Project (ECP) has succeeded in preparing applications to run efficiently on the first reported Exascale supercomputers in the world. To achieve this, it modernized the whole leadership software stack, from libraries to simulation codes. In this article, we contrast selected leadership software before and after ECP. We discuss how sustainable research software development for leadership computing can embrace the conversation with the hardware vendors, the leadership computing facilities, the software community, and the domain scientists who are the application developers and integrators of software products. We elaborate on how software needs to take portability as a central design principle and to benefit from interdependent teams; we also demonstrate how moving to programming languages with high momentum, like modern C++, can help improve the sustainability, interoperability, and performance of research software. Finally, we showcase how cross-institutional efforts can enable algorithm advances that are beyond incremental performance optimization.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2016

Marshall Space Flight Center Ground Systems Development and Integration

Ground Systems Development and Integration performs a variety of tasks in support of the Mission Operations Laboratory (MOL) and other Center and Agency projects. These tasks include various systems engineering processes such as performing system requirements development, system architecture design, integration, verification and validation, software development, and sustaining engineering of mission operations systems that has evolved the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) into a leader in remote operations for current and future NASA space projects. The group is also responsible for developing and managing telemetry and command configuration and calibration databases. Personnel are responsible for maintaining and enhancing their disciplinary skills in the areas of project management, software engineering, software development, software process improvement, telecommunications, networking, and systems management. Domain expertise in the ground systems area is also maintained and includes detailed proficiency in the areas of real-time telemetry systems, command systems, voice, video, data networks, and mission planning systems.

Wade, Gina↗
DOE OSTI2022

Challenges of and Opportunities for a Large Diverse Software Team

A large software team consisting of members with different expertise, skillsets, personalities, ethnicities, and involving collaboration on a large and complex software product presents many technical and cultural challenges, but also provides unique opportunities. In this article, we discuss the essential issues we faced when successfully transforming a collection of various independently developed software libraries into one large integrated product: the eXtreme-scale scientific Software Development Kit (xSDK). Furthermore, we argue it is just as important to pay attention to cultural challenges, such as establishment of reliable communication channels that considers, among others, differences in personalities and backgrounds as well as overcoming geographical separation and time-zone distribution when collaborating, as technical challenges. Finally, we discuss opportunities stemming from participating in a large diverse software team, such as increased internal expertise, variety of skillsets, broadened connections to external experts, and access to a larger pool of ideas or solutions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Software Sustainability $\&$ High Energy Physics

New facilities of the 2020s, such as the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), will be relevant through at least the 2030s. This means that their software efforts and those that are used to analyze their data need to consider sustainability to enable their adaptability to new challenges, longevity, and efficiency, over at least this period. This will help ensure that this software will be easier to develop and maintain, that it remains available in the future on new platforms, that it meets new needs, and that it is as reusable as possible. This report discusses a virtual half-day workshop on "Software Sustainability and High Energy Physics" that aimed 1) to bring together experts from HEP as well as those from outside to share their experiences and practices, and 2) to articulate a vision that helps the Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics (IRIS-HEP) to create a work plan to implement elements of software sustainability. Software sustainability practices could lead to new collaborations, including elements of HEP software being directly used outside the field, and, as has happened more frequently in recent years, to HEP developers contributing to software developed outside the field rather than reinventing it. A focus on and skills related to sustainable software will give HEP software developers an important skill that is essential to careers in the realm of software, inside or outside HEP. The report closes with recommendations to improve software sustainability in HEP, aimed at the HEP community via IRIS-HEP and the HEP Software Foundation (HSF).

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2026

CodeScribe Agent

SF-26-086 CodeScribe introduces a structured, multi-stage pipeline that combines deterministic program analysis with LLM-powered translation to enable incremental, testable Fortran-to-C++ migration. First, `code-scribe index` traverses the project directory tree and produces `scribe.yaml` metadata files recording all modules, subroutines, and functions at each level, giving the LLM accurate structural context instead of a hallucinated codebase model. Second, `code-scribe draft` performs the deterministic portion of translation — converting Fortran types to C++ equivalents, replacing `use` statements with `#include` and `using namespace` directives, and detecting constructs requiring special handling — while embedding`scribe-prompt` annotations that guide the LLM through non-trivial cases such as statement-function-to-lambda conversions and `extern "C"` wrapper generation. Third, `code-scribe translate` applies project-specific TOML-based few-shot prompt templates and submits the composed prompt to a pluggable LLM backend (OpenAI, Anthropic, Argonne ARGO, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or local Hugging Face checkpoints), producing a C++ source file, a header, and a Fortran-C++ interface file for each translated routine so the codebase compiles and runs correctly throughout the migration. Beyond translation, CodeScribe includes a tool-using coding agent (`code-scribe agent`) with read, bash, edit, and write capabilities, and a bounded loop mode (`code-scribe loop`) that runs repeated stateless agent sessions over a task file with restricted tool access — enabling sustained, auditable software development workflows for broader scientific computing tasks.

Dhruv, Akash [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), A↗
NASA NTRS1990

Space Station Freedom Software Support Environment

Viewgraphs on the Space Station Freedom Software Support Environment are presented. After a brief overview of the SSE, the implementation approach and the current and planned functionality are described. The implications and future potential of this common environment for software development and sustaining engineering are also discussed.

Voigt, Susan J.↗