Proposal Submission Information

The ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC) is a high performance computing allocation program for projects of interest to the Department of Energy (DOE), with an emphasis on high-risk, high-payoff scientific campaigns in areas directly related to the DOE mission, that respond to national emergencies, or that broaden the community of researchers capable of using leadership computing resources.  ALCC projects span a wide range of large-scale computing approaches, including modeling and simulation, artificial intelligence (AI), and data analysis.

ALCC is currently soliciting proposals for allocation awards for the 2026-2027 allocation year. High performance computing (HPC) machines available for the current allocation cycle include Frontier, the exascale system at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Aurora, the exascale system at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF); Polaris, the 44-petaflop accelerated system at ALCF; and Perlmutter, an accelerated system at National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. 10% to 30% of the allocatable computing time will be made available on each of these machines to the ALCC program.

Proposal Submission Instructions

All proposals must be submitted electronically via the ALCC submission site.

Electronic applications will be accepted starting Monday, November 17, 2025, through 8:00 pm EDT on Monday, January 26, 2026.

Proposal Content:

  1. Proposal Title
  2. Team and Contacts

Primary PI and Co-PIs

  1. Project Information
    1. Area of Alignment
    2. Science Category
    3. Summary
  2. Funding
    1. Project Financial Support
    2. Award number
    3. Program manager or program sponsor contact information
  3. HPC Resource Request
    1. Machine and hours request.
      1. Proposals that request more than the allocation request limit for any of the available resources will be considered non-responsive and may not undergo merit review, and pre-proposals with such large requests may be declined.
      2. Proposals requesting time on Frontier, Aurora, Polaris or Perlmutter-GPU that do not use the GPUs will be considered nonresponsive.
      3. Number entered will be processed as x 10^6. This should be the physical node-hours on the requested machine, NOT multiplied by any site charging factor.
    2. Code description (or link to project code) along with description of planned production runs, number of nodes per run, expected wall-clock time required, and how benchmarking was determined.
    3. Licensed Software or Data Requirements
    4. Open Source
    5. Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) Relevance
    6. Additional comments or considerations
  4. Previous Allocation History
    1. Is this application a renewal of a current ALCC allocation?
    2. Has the PI or any Co-PIs received any allocations for ASCR resources in support of this project or any previous project?
    3. Do you currently have or have had any other high performance computing allocations in support of this project?
  5. Security Questionnaire
    1. Proprietary Information
    2. Export Control
    3. Privacy Information
  6. Suggested and Prohibited Reviewers
    1. List any persons/affiliations that the PI requests we NOT use as reviewers for this proposal.
    2. Please suggest 1-2 potential reviewers who have relevant expertise, but who are not involved with this project.
    3. AI Acknowledgement
  7. Project Narrative and Supplemental Materials

    Please use the provided templates.

    Concatenate all materials into a single PDF file. Prior to submission, it is strongly recommended that proposers review their proposals to ensure they comply with the proposal preparation instructions.

    1. Project Executive Summary (1 page maximum)
    2. Project Narrative (15 page maximum)
    3. Milestone Table
    4. Publications Resulting from prior ALCC Awards (if appropriate)
    5. Personnel Justification and Management Plan
    6. Biographical Sketches for the PI and all co-PIs.
    7. Collaborator Table
  8. Prohibited Content Agreement

Proposal Evaluation

Proposals are internally reviewed by DOE Program Mangers and externally reviewed by science domain experts and HPC experts to determine scientific merit, responsiveness to the DOE mission, and ability to broaden the HPC community. Proposals are selected for allocation based off reviewer comments and agency/office priorities.

Questions about can be directed to: ALCC-ASCR@science.doe.gov

Proposal decisions will be communicated by Friday, May 29, 2026.