NEWPORT NEWS — The U.S. Department of Energy has announced the selection of Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility as the lead for its new High Performance Data Facility Hub.
According to an official announcement, Jefferson Lab will partner with the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to form a joint project team it will lead.
At $300-500 million, the High Performance Data Facility (HPDF) will provide “transformational capabilities” for data analysis, networking and storage for the nation’s research. According to Jefferson Lab, it will provide researchers with tools, methods and technologies to maximize the scientific value of data.
“We are honored to be selected by the DOE’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research program to lead this project,” said Jefferson Lab Director Stuart Henderson. “Building on our extensive experience with large data sets and high performance computing, and our new and ongoing partnerships exploring state-of-the-art approaches to data and data science, we will build a new facility that will revolutionize the way we make scientific discoveries.”
According to Jefferson Lab, the mission of the HPDF will be to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery by providing researchers the ability to seamlessly access data from a wide range of sources and scientific facilities — even in real time — applying state-of-the-art computational capabilities on a high-performance computing platform in a secure environment.
“Our partnership with Berkeley Lab will help ensure geographic resilience and innovative infrastructure for this unique facility in support of researchers across the United States. Jefferson Lab looks forward to working with our colleagues at Berkeley Lab and our other national lab partners to develop and deploy state-of-the-art data management infrastructure, capabilities and tools with HPDF,” Henderson said.
The Jefferson Lab HPDF Hub will be housed in the Jefferson Lab Data Center Building, with construction of the new building being funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia, which has already provided $6 million in seed funding and has committed to provide $43 million to fund the construction of the data center building on Jefferson Lab’s central campus.
“We would like to thank our many partners for their tireless support — from the Commonwealth of Virginia and the City of Newport News, to our Virginia University system partners, our many regional business leaders, our national lab colleagues and our new project partner, Berkeley Lab,” Henderson said. “We would also like to thank our elected representatives, who have offered unwavering support for this project.”
According to Jefferson Lab, its proposal to build the new HPDF Hub was strongly supported by partner colleges and universities throughout Virginia, including Old Dominion University, William & Mary, Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia.
Initial project budget estimates and timelines project an approximate operational budget of $75 million per year, which begins ramping up in fiscal year 2028, according to the announcement.
