National Center for Computational Sciences

If you want to see someone’s face light up, try talking to a scientist in a supercomputer lab about their machines.

I had that experience last week when, as the last major stop on Road Trip 2008, I visited the National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at the Oak Ridge National Lab to get a quick look at what is certainly one of the top facilities of its kind in the world.

My host was computational scientist Bronson Messer, and during a whirlwind tour of the center, he showed me several of the world’s most powerful computers.

Oak Ridge National Lab, which is a Department of Energy research center not far from Knoxville, Tenn., is probably most famous for being the place where the first plutonium was processed for the Manhattan Project during World War II. But these days, it is a hotbed of research into materials sciences, energy efficiency and, of course, supercomputing.

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