PHILADELPHIA -- Two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have been awarded national supercomputing resources to allow them further cutting-edge research in a matter of months, rather than years or even decades.

Andrew M. Rappe, professor in the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences, will perform a computational demonstration of feasible dynamically, tunable heterogeneous catalysts. Many surface catalysts with valuable properties have been developed for industry, but their ability to adapt to changing reaction conditions is limited. Tunable catalysts would bring significant advantages, enhancing reactivity in harsh environments where control of conditions is difficult, making new chemical transformations feasible. Rappe will use the processing power of these supercomputers to monitor every bonding electron in the reactions he models.

Michael L. Klein, professor of chemistry with Penn’s Center for Molecular Modeling and director of Penn’s Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter, will study the behavior of aqueous foam products, known in households as bubbles or suds. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of bubble formation, dynamics and stability are important for transforming industrial knowledge of detergents, fire-control chemicals and chemicals for hazardous cleanup/remediation, as well as designing environmentally friendly consumer products.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science chose 66 projects and awarded them access to some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers at DOE national laboratories. The projects, competitively selected for their technical readiness and scientific merit, will advance research in areas such as astrophysics, climate change, new materials, energy production and biology.

The allocations of supercomputing and data storage resources are made under DOE’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment, or INCITE program, which supports computationally intensive, large-scale research projects. Nearly 900 million processor-hours are being awarded to 25 new projects and 41 renewal projects.

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