ALCC FAQ

General Questions

  1. What is ALCC?
  2. What is new for the 2025-2026 allocation cycle?
  3. How is ALCC different from other ASCR allocation programs (INCITE, ERCAP, Directors Discretionary)?
  4. How many years can I request for allocation?

Eligibility and Review Process

  1. Who is eligible to apply for ALCC time?
  2. What are the criteria for review of ALCC proposals?
  3. Does my project have to be funded by DOE to be eligible for an ALCC award?
  4. If I do have DOE funding, do I need to include the grant or contract number?
  5. What are the DOE research priority areas?
  6. My project is not funded, am I eligible to apply for ALCC and can I get funding from ALCC?
  7. Do I have to demonstrate scalability?
  8. Can I submit a proposal to request proprietary research?
  9. What rationale can cause a proposal to be rejected without review?
  10. Can I see my reviews? When?

Resources Available

  1. What computers are included in the ALCC awards?
  2. How much time is available in the awards?
  3. Does ALCC have restrictions on time requested?

Submission Logistics

  1. Is a pre-proposal required?
  2. What should be in the pre-proposal?
  3. Are templates available for the pre-proposal?
  4. What should be included in the Executive Summary/Abstract?
  5. How do I submit a pre-proposal?
  6. What is the deadline for the pre-proposal?
  7. What should be in the proposal?
  8. What is meant by “Administration Details”?
  9. Are templates available for the proposal?
  10. How do I submit a proposal?
  11. What is the deadline for the proposal?

Award Information

  1. When will I be notified about the status of my proposal?
  2. When can I publicly announce my award?
  3. What are my responsibilities if I receive an award?
  4. How do I reference my award?

General Questions

  1. What is ALCC?

    The mission of the ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) is to provide an allocation program for projects of interest to the Department of Energy (DOE) with an emphasis on high-risk, high-payoff simulations in areas directly related to the DOE mission, in response to National emergencies, and for broadening the community of researchers capable of using leadership computing resources. ALCC does NOT award any funding or financial support.

  2. What is new for the 2025-2026 allocation cycle?

    The 2025-2026 ALCC allocation cycle will operate like prior years with a required pre-proposal submission, followed by a proposal submission.

    • Pre-proposal due date: November 11th at 8pm ET
    • Proposal due date: February 10th at 8pm ET

    Like prior years, all requested allocations should adhere to the Allocation Request Cap For more information, please see Allocation Request Cap Information. In addition, the program will again enforce a mid-cycle reduction for projects that do not use their allocation in a timely manner. Please see Allocation Reduction Information

  3. How is ALCC different from other ASCR allocation programs (INCITE, ERCAP, Directors Discretionary)?

    The ALCC program offers medium to large awards at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) that are primarily focused on Office of Science priority areas and administration priorities. The allocation program is managed by the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Program Office.

    The Energy Research Computing Allocations Process (ERCAP) offers small to medium allocations only at NERSC. These allocations are managed directly by the Office of Science program offices (e.g. ASCR, BER, BES, FES, HEP, NP, IP, SBIR). For more information see:NERSC ERCAP Request Form

    The Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program awards medium-to-large allocations at the DOE’s leadership computing facilities (OLCF and ALCR). The program seeks computationally intensive, large-scale research projects that can make high-impact scientific and engineering advances through the use of a substantial allocation of computer time and data storage. The INCITE program specifically encourages proposals from research organizations including universities, national laboratories, and industry. For more information see: doeleadershipcomputing.org
    Director’s Discretionary allocations are generally small, exploratory allocation at each of the ASCR computing facilities that enable users test, develop, and scale their code. Director’s Discretionary allocations can also be granted to advance each facilities strategic goals. For more information see:

  4. How many years can I request for allocation?
    ALCC is a one-year allocation program. Projects must submit new applications each year. If your project is part of a multi-year effort, you should mention how this year’s request fits into your overall plans.

General Questions

  1. Who is eligible to apply for ALCC time?
    Funded researchers affiliated with a university, lab, agency, or industry performing research in a science area that supports the DOE mission/ research priority areas.

  2. What are the criteria for review of ALCC proposals?
    ALCC proposals are evaluated based on DOE Office of Science mission relevance, technical merit, and computational plan. For additional information, please reference the review questions.

  3. Does my project have to be funded by DOE to be eligible for an ALCC award?
    No, however you DO need to identify the relevant DOE Office/research priority area, and you need to provide the name and email of your program manager/project sponsor. Program priority is part of the merit review and projects that do not have input from the sponsor program will not be competitive.

  4. If I do have DOE funding, do I need to include the grant or contract number?
    No, however you DO need to include which DOE Office/research priority area and provide the name and email of your program manager/project sponsor. Program priority is part of the merit review and projects that do not have input from the sponsor program will not be competitive.

  5. What are the DOE research priority areas?

    Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) 

    Basic Energy Sciences (BES) 

    Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

    Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) 

    High Energy Physics (HEP)

    Nuclear Physics (NP) 

    Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)

    Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) 

    Nuclear Energy (NE) 

    National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) 

  6. My project is not funded. Am I eligible to apply for ALCC, and can I get funding from ALCC?

    No. ALCC does not award funding. All ALCC projects must have approved funding from another source.

  7. Do I have to demonstrate scalability?

    No. However, if you have scalability info, you should include it. Also, new this year, the Pre-Proposal asks for details such as what codes you plan to use, your workflow and how you plan to use the allocation. This is to identify projects that are not well matched to the resources available. PIs should be aware of the facility policies, especially the queueing policies, the codes and tools that are supported at each facility, and the projects that have been successful in previous ALCC cycles.

  8. Can I submit a proposal to request proprietary research?
    Projects cannot require a Proprietary User Agreement. However, the Industrial Partnership User Agreement for ALCC allows industrial projects to perform some proprietary work so long as a meaningful list of research results and data are released to the public. Interested applicants should contact the designated industrial outreach contact at ASCR user facilities for more information and concurrence before submitting the full proposal. NOTE: the proposal itself should NOT contain proprietary info.

    OLCF Website for Industry
    Suzy Tichenor
    Director, Industrial Partnerships,
    Computing and Computational Sciences
    Oak Ridge National Laboratory
    (703) 413-7846
    tichenorsp@ornl.gov

    Appropiate use of NERSC Resources

    ALCF Website for Industry
    industry@alcf.anl.gov

  9. What rationale can cause a proposal to be rejected without review?
    The following are reasons a proposal will be deemed unresponsive and may not undergo merit review: Proposals that were declined at the Pre-proposal stage; Proposals that did not submit a Pre-Proposal; Incomplete proposals (missing any of the required elements); Proposals lacking a recognized funding source; Proposals for research that is unrelated to the DOE Mission/ research priority areas; Proposals that lack a PI affiliated with a recognized entity (university, lab, agency or industry); Proposals that request the OLCF but do not intend to use the GPUs; Proposals that do not adhere to the Facility user policies; and Proposals that request more than the allocation request limit for any resource.

  10. Can I see my reviews? When?

    After the final award decisions are made, ALL PIs will be notified of the status of their projects. Each PI will then be able to request an anonymized copy of their review comments and scores.

Resources Available

  1. What computers are included in the ALCC awards?
    For the 2025-2026 ALCC Allocation year:

  2. How much time is available in the awards?
    Awards of time are granted in millions of node-hours on the specific machines available for a given year. Projects may request up to the request limit for a given resource. For more information see Allocation Request Cap Information.

  3. Does ALCC have restrictions on time requested?
    PIs should consider the size of their request in the context of the total pool of time that is available for a particular year and the other allocation programs. Very large projects are encouraged to apply to the INCITE program.

    Proposals requesting time on Frontier, Aurora, Polaris, or Perlmutter-GPU that do not use the GPUs will also be considered nonresponsive. PIs should familiarize themselves with all the policies of the requested facilities as projects that do not meet these policies will be considered nonresponsive:

    OLCF - Frontier

    ALCF - Aurora

    NERSC - Perlmutter

Submission Logistics

  1. Is a pre-proposal required?
    Yes. The pre-proposal content is subject to internal review and is a determining factor in allocation decisions. The pre-proposals are used to determine if the project is of high-level program relevance and evaluate if the requested resources are appropriate for the planned project.

  2. What should be in the pre-proposal?
    Please see pre-proposal submission information for a detailed description of the pre-proposal contents.

  3. Are templates available for the pre-proposal or proposal?
    Templates are available for multiple components of the pre-proposal and proposal.

  4. What should be included in the Executive Summary/Abstract?
    This section (1 page maximum) is used to assess mission coverage and impact. It should list main project goals in the context of the DOE mission and/or broadening the HPC community. Be sure to mention any dependencies with other activities (e.g., “Simulation data generated will be used in design of instrument X, scheduled to deploy in 2023”). This section is also used to assess what expertise reviewers should have in order to give an accurate assessment of the full proposal. In describing what the project will do and how it will do it, be sure to explicitly list the science domain (e.g. “biomass engineering”, “tokamak plasma turbulence”, “solar cell design”, etc.) and theoretical and computations methods (e.g., “computational fluid dynamics”, “quantum Monte Carlo”, “machine learning”, etc.) to be used.

  5. How do I submit a pre-proposal?
    Submission of pre-proposal is done digitally atALCC Application Dashboard.The person performing the submission must have a PeerNet account. Only one person/email address can edit the submitted pre-proposal. The registration information from the PeerNet account used to enter the data will be imported as “Author” and that person will be the authorized contact to edit and submit both the pre-proposal and the full proposal. The Author may be the PI or another member of the team. An author can submit only one proposal. We recognize that some pre-proposal submissions may not be followed by a full proposal, but ALL proposals must have first submitted a pre-proposal.

  6. What is the deadline for the pre-proposal?
    The pre-proposal will be due on Monday November 11 at 8PM ET. If you encounter difficulties, send an email to us before the deadline at ALCC-ASCR@science.doe.gov.

  7. What should be in the proposal?
    Please see the Proposal Submission Information for detailed information about the proposal content.

  8. How do I submit a proposal?
    Proposals should be submitted digitally at ALCC Application Dashboard.

    All the information from the pre-proposal will be automatically moved over to the draft proposal, where it may be edited (and pdfs may be retained or replaced with new uploads).

  9. What is the deadline for the proposal?
    The proposal will be due on Monday February 10 at 8PM ET. If you encounter difficulties, send an email to us before the deadline at ALCC-ASCR@science.doe.gov.

Award Information

  1. When will I be notified about the status of my proposal?
    Applicants will be notified about the status of their application on or before May 31, 2025.

  2. When can I publicly announce my award?
    Awardees can announce their award publicly after the DOE issues a press release, or after the start of the allocation period (July 1, 2025).

  3. What are my responsibilities if I receive an award?
    The PI of each awarded project will be expected to provide an edited abstract for the award announcement, sign terms-of-use agreements with each facility where an allocation is granted and provide an end-of-year report. All ALCC users are expected to acknowledge the facility where they received allocations and the ALCC program in publications resulting from their award.

    Non-compliance with the Terms of Use Agreement may result in the suspension of computer access.

  4. How do I reference my award?
    The appropriate acknowledgement is listed below for ALCC and the respective facility.

    ALCC/ALCF Acknowledgement: An award of computer time was provided by the ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) program. This research used resources of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

    ALCC/OLCF Acknowledgement: An award of computer time was provided the ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) program. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

    ALCC/NERSC Acknowledgement: An award of computer time was provided by the ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) program. This research used resources of the National Energy Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.