FLC | LBNL's COVID-19 research efforts span five facilities

LBNL's COVID-19 research efforts span five facilities

April 11, 2020

The research efforts under way at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory span five different Department of Energy Office of Science User Facilities: the Advanced Light Source, Molecular Foundry, Joint Genome Institute (JGI), National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), and the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet).

“Many in the Berkeley Lab community are eager to contribute; this is what makes the Lab such a great place to work,” said Lab Director Mike Witherell. “Our goal is to identify areas in which we can use our unique resources to make the greatest impact on time-sensitive COVID-19 research. We are being careful to take on critical research we can do within the constraints imposed by the status of our site, and while ensuring the health and safety of staff and community.”

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) and Molecular Foundry are conducting approved essential research with external collaborating researchers that may help in developing therapeutics to combat COVID-19. In early April, the ALS began operating a limited number of scientific instruments known as beamlines for three days a week to accommodate several academic and industry user groups, in a remote access mode. These groups are pursuing structural biology work on non-infectious protein components of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

A Stanford-based group is working with Molecular Foundry staff to synthesize peptidomimetic polymers, or peptoids. These materials have the potential to serve as packages for antiviral agents, or as antiviral agents themselves, against COVID-19.

The NERSC and ESnet — which can be accessed remotely — have remained operational because of their roles in supporting the computing and data science research at all the DOE laboratories. NERSC is contributing resources to the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium. ESnet is providing scientists robust, high-bandwidth access to the power of DOE supercomputer centers like NERSC and enabling research efforts into the COVID-19 pandemic. NERSC has set up dedicated queues running COVID-19-related research projects on Cori, a Cray XC40 supercomputer able to perform nearly 30 quadrillion calculations per second.

Experts in high-throughput automation from the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) have been bringing their expertise to a broad effort at UC Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute to develop a robotic testing lab.