Simulations on NSF-Funded Bridges-2 Supercomputer and Others Lead to Discovery, Characterization of Failed Stars; Granted “Best Use of HPC in Physical Sciences” at 22nd Annual HPCwire Awards
A series of simulations of brown dwarf stars, carried out by supercomputers at PSC and elsewhere, has earned an HPCwire Editors’ Choice Award. The simulations and data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) enabled the first identification and characterization of the failed stars in a globular cluster in our Milky Way galaxy.
Presented to leaders in the global high performance computing community at the 2025 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC25), in St. Louis, Missouri, the coveted annual awards are determined through a nomination and voting process with the global HPCwire community, as well as selections from the HPCwire editors. The awards are an annual feature of the publication and constitute prestigious recognition from the HPC community. They are revealed each year to kick off the annual supercomputing conference, which showcases high performance computing, networking, storage, and data analysis.
The list of winners was revealed at the SC25 HPCwire booth, as well as on the HPCwire website: https://www.hpcwire.com/2025-hpcwire-awards- readers-editors-choice.
“This award exemplifies a core principle behind PSC’s mission,” said Barr von Oehsen, PhD, Director of PSC. “By contributing expertise and computational resources, we can support and enable research that would not have been possible without such extensive collaboration.”
PSC was recognized along with an international team of researchers that used JWST data and simulations on supercomputers, including Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC)’s Bridges-2 and San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)’s Expanse, to identify and date three brown dwarfs in one of the Milky Way galaxy’s globular clusters for the first time. The scientists gained time on the high performance computers via ACCESS, the National Science Foundation’s network of supercomputing centers, in which PSC is a leading member.
Globular clusters are collections of stars, some of the oldest known structures in the Milky Way. Their properties preserve the record of conditions in the early Universe. But estimating their exact ages is very challenging, and different dating techniques often disagree with each other. Brown dwarfs, too small to be stars and too large to be planets, cool off over time in a predictable way. Characterizing these stars provides a new way to estimate the age of the parent cluster, offering a window on the early Universe.
“While the early advances in applying AI to science and engineering are producing exciting and impressive results, traditional HPC continues to drive breakthrough discoveries for mission-critical workloads and applications,” said Tom Tabor, CEO of TCI Media, publishers of HPCwire. “The 2025 Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards truly capture this dynamic era of innovation.”
More information on these awards can be found at the HPCwire website (www.HPCwire.com) or on X through the following hashtag: #HPCwireRCA25.