NHERI SPARC Program Pioneers New Model for Research Acceleration
Published on November 20, 2025
The 2025 SPARC cohort at the Texas Advanced Computer Center (Image: Jorge Salazar, TACC)
The NHERI DesignSafe and SimCenter teams joined forces to co-host a transformative, in-person workshop, July 16-18, 2025, at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). The inaugural event, part of the new Strategic Program to Accelerate Researchers in Computing (SPARC), brought together 17 graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and early-career faculty to accelerate their natural hazards research by harnessing the combined capabilities of high-performance computing, machine learning, and regional-scale risk assessment tools.
A New SPARC Experience
SPARC is designed to move beyond standard workshop or training by immersing participants in a research accelerator environment. The SPARC program, co-led by Krishna Kumar (DesignSafe, UT Austin) and Adam Zsarnoczay (SimCenter, Stanford University), empowered attendees to utilize DesignSafe’s high-performance computing infrastructure and data platform integrated with the SimCenter’s suite of open-source applications to foster new research paradigms. This integration allowed participants to move seamlessly between developing machine learning surrogate models on Jupyter notebooks in HPC environments and executing rigorous uncertainty quantification for large-scale hazard scenarios using SimCenter applications such as R2D, OpenSees, OpenFOAM, HydroUQ, and WE-UQ. By accessing these tools in a single, integrated environment, attendees could visualize how high-performance computing, data analytics, and advanced simulation work to enable new research workflows
Mentorship in Real-Time
The program’s success relied on a collaborative mentorship model. DesignSafe and the SimCenter mentors worked side-by-side with attendees to troubleshoot code, optimize simulation parameters on TACC systems, and streamline data analysis.
This immediate access to technical expertise helped researchers overcome computational bottlenecks that might otherwise stall progress. One participant noted the impact of this direct collaboration: "The most valuable aspect of the program was the one-on-one interaction with [NHERI computational] experts. Being onsite allowed me to engage in real time and resolve issues efficiently, which significantly accelerated my progress."
Building a Community of Practice
Beyond the technical milestones, SPARC fostered a shared experience for the next generation of natural hazards engineers. The format encouraged peer-to-peer learning, with researchers sharing insights on how to best leverage the NHERI cyberinfrastructure for diverse hazards, from seismic events to hurricane storm surge. By merging the cyberinfrastructure capabilities of DesignSafe with the modeling power of the SimCenter, SPARC demonstrated the practical value of a unified NHERI computational ecosystem–offering a clear path for researchers to accelerate their work through integrated computing.
These powerful tools and resources are available to all NHERI researchers. We especially encourage early-career researchers to explore the extensive documentation, watch training webinars on the NHERI DesignSafe YouTube channel, and schedule a meeting during open office hours (DesignSafe and SimCenter) to discuss their research projects.