Announcement of Opportunity (AO) - DTC Visitor Program Special Call
Community Engagement in Advancing the Unified Forecast System (UFS) Hierarchical System Development (HSD)
The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is pleased to announce a special opportunity for the community to participate in advancing the Hierarchical System Development (HSD) framework under development by the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) for the Unified Forecast System (UFS) through the DTC Visitor Program.
This call, which is sponsored by the EPIC Program Office, seeks to engage early-career researchers (within 5 years of degree completion) and graduate students to collaborate with DTC and its partners to expand and enhance the HSD framework. Note: Federal employees are not eligible for this call.
The HSD framework, developed collaboratively by the UFS community, provides a structured, hierarchical approach for testing and evaluation of Earth System Model components, from isolated physics modules to fully coupled systems. This methodology supports model innovation and accelerates the Research-to-Operations (R2O) process. Learn more: Hierarchical System Development (HSD) and HSD White Paper (in particular, Chapter IV. Proposed Plan in HSD).
Visitors supported through this opportunity will contribute to the development, testing, and integration of new cases, tools, and capabilities, along with associated user documentation, within the UFS HSD infrastructure, aligning with the DTC’s mission of bridging research and operations.
Topics of Interest
The goal of this opportunity is to collect community intelligence and strengthen the HSD ecosystem by supporting projects that result in shared resources. Successful applicants will have the opportunity to collaborate with DTC staff and other UFS partners.
Projects can focus on any components of the coupled UFS framework, e.g., atmosphere, land, ocean, ice, and wave. Capabilities for the atmospheric component can focus on configurations that use the Finite-Volume Cubed Sphere (FV3) and/or Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) dynamical cores. Projects responsive to this AO may include, but are not limited to:
- Add and document new real-world test cases that correspond to known biases or issues with the current modeling/forecasting systems within the HSD framework;
- Develop and document new idealized or configurable experiments to isolate and diagnose model behaviors in the HSD framework - methods to decouple feedback in UFS applications for diagnostic testing, such as
- Adding single-column model (SCM) cases/experiments/suites;
- Adding large-eddy simulation (LES) capability;
- Removing feedback from the coupled Earth system models, e.g., replacing a fully active component with a data component.
Visitor Support Options
This special call offers two types of projects, with the goal of supporting 2-3 projects under this opportunity.
- Projects by early-career PI (within 5 years of degree completion)
- Successful applicants for this type of project can request travel, per diem and an honorarium to visit the DTC (Boulder, CO) and collaborate with the DTC and EPIC staff for up to one month. It is possible to distribute the one month of support over multiple visits, within reason, during the six-month period [Tips: Some past visitors have found it useful to plan an initial visit early in their visitor appointment and a final visit near the end of their appointment, where the total number of travel days across the two trips is no more than one month].
- Honorarium support is possible for some remote work at the visitor’s home institution.
- Support to attend conferences and publication costs related to the project may be requested.
- Projects by a graduate student advised by the PI
- Successful applicants for this type of project will be offered up to six months of living per diem stipend and travel expenses for the graduate student to visit the DTC (Boulder, CO) and collaborate with the DTC and EPIC staff, and up to one week of travel and per diem for the project PI to visit the DTC. The graduate student is welcome to come for multiple shorter visits, within reason, over the six-month period.
- Support to attend conferences and publication costs related to the project may be requested.
How To Apply
Proposals in response to this announcement should be submitted through an online application form: https://dtcenter.org/visitor-program/application-special-call. The proposal package should include:
- Project description including a title, computational resource requirements (processing, disk space and storage), duration(s) of planned visits, if honorarium support is requested (PI projects only), and expected outcomes (up to 5 pages). Project descriptions exceeding 5 pages will not be accepted.
- Curriculum Vitae (1-2 pages).
As noted above, it is expected that the visitor will spend a residency of no more than one month (six months for a graduate student project) at the DTC. It is expected that visitors will be able to continue their work from their own institution using DTC computational resources. We allow for some flexibility within the general guidelines, and encourage prospective visitors to contact us to discuss their ideas and arrangements of their visit prior to applying.
Upon completion, visitors will be expected to provide:
- A visitor project report summarizing outcomes;
- A DTC seminar to share outcomes with the broad community;
- Demonstration of potential transition of new HSD capabilities to the UFS repositories.
Proposal Evaluation Process
Proposals submitted in response to this announcement will be subject to both internal and external review. The external review will be conducted by the DTC Science Advisory Board (SAB), which consists of scientists from government labs, operational centers, and academic institutions. The DTC Management Board will make the final decision based on recommendations to the DTC Director from the review by the DTC SAB. Focus categories for which the reviewers are asked to rate proposals include:
- Potential to advance the UFS HSD framework
- Feasibility
- Potential to provide useful insight into the UFS modeling behaviors
- Approach being scientifically sound
Contact
For inquiries or discussion of project suitability, please contact: visitor-program@dtcenter.org
