December 2025

The ACCESS Advance is a monthly newsletter produced by the U.S. National Science Foundation's ACCESS (Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support) program. It contains science stories enabled by ACCESS, program news and opportunities for users.

In this Issue

An Award-winning Time at SC25
STEP Applications Now Being Accepted
Spotlight: Expanse Serves Research Community for Five Years and Counting

Opportunities

Events and Trainings

Community Announcements

Science Stories

enabled by ACCESS

In a Galaxy (Not So) Far, Far Away

Using a new analytical tools and the Bridges-2 supercomputer at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, researchers with the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University analyzed the light spectra of many individual stars in the Magellanic Clouds all at once. The precision measurements give us a better look at our closest neighbors.

Read the full story here

It Is Rocket Science

A team led by Georgia Tech used DeltaAI at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the fastest AI-enabled machines in Europe to simulate compressible fluid flows of a spacecraft with many rocket engines. The work, which was nominated for the 2025 Gordon Bell Prize, helps engineers understand how hot exhaust can be reflected back – which can be catastrophic.

Read the full story here

Powering Genetic Research

Researchers at the University of California Riverside used Expanse at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and Bridges-2 at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to uncover how a bacterial protein can steer the “jumping” of genes to specific spots in the genome. Mobile DNA could let scientists add beneficial genes with pinpoint accuracy.

Read the full story here

What's New?

An Award-winning Time at SC25

U.S. National Science Foundation ACCESS staff recently spent the week at SC25 in St. Louis supporting the ACCESS booth and leading presentations and workshops. Each year at SC, HPCwire recognizes impactful research projects powered by high-performance computing. In addition to the HPCwire awards given to the ACCESS program this year, affiliated Centers took home a number of awards that utilized ACCESS resources. You can read about the awards that recognized the outstanding work done on resources allocated through ACCESS here.

STEP Applications Now Being Accepted

Applications for the 2026 Student Training and Engagement Program (STEP) cohort will be accepted through Feb. 1, 2026. Please help us spread the word! Students can visit the STEP website to learn more and apply.

Spotlight

Expanse Serves Research Community for Five Years and Counting

Expanse is a dedicated ACCESS cluster designed by Dell and the San Diego Supercomputer Center. It delivers 5.16 peak petaflops, and offers Composable Systems and Cloud Bursting. The system entered production mode in December 2020 and has been used by researchers nationwide to address questions in astrophysics, materials science, life sciences and more. The system helped SDSC and ACCESS win a Reader’s Choice Award for Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences. That work involved scientists from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the University of Florida, who used Expanse to make a groundbreaking discovery about the characterization of hemodynamics in blood vessel sprouts. The work created a foundation for better understanding and prediction of how new blood vessels grow. For more on Expanse, visit our Expanse Resource page. For more on all ACCESS resources, visit the ACCESS Resources page.

ACCESS Website

Events & Trainings

Community Announcements

ACCESS is supported by the

National Science Foundation.