NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) in Newport News received honors to help lead the way for energy research in the United States.
The Department of Energy selected the laboratory as the Hub Director for the brand-new "High Performance Data Facility (HPDF). The new facility will be a national $300-$500 million computing and data infrastructure resource, researching everything from artificial intelligence to real-time data experiments.
“So that you get more science than you would from analyzing an individual source and this is what AI is all about,” said Amber Boehnlein, the project director for the HPDF.
Monday's announcement was celebrated by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, as well U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, with Warner calling it "a monumental win for the Lab."
“This is the single, biggest technology investment in Hampton Roads ever,” Warner said.
"Today's announcement is a massive step towards realizing the goal of diversifying the mission of Jefferson Lab by providing the Lab with a critical national resource that will be used to tackle fundamental problems in science and engineering, including artificial intelligence research," Warner also said in a news release.
"Our Administration will continue to support the cutting-edge technological research that has established the Commonwealth as a nationwide leader in innovation," Youngkin added.
In a bipartisan effort, Warner, Kaine, and Youngkin worked with the General Assembly to secure over $40 million in Commonwealth funds for the planning and construction of a shell building to house the HPDF at Jefferson Lab. It comes on top of over $76 million in federal funding that will provide Jefferson Lab with project support and infrastructure upgrades.
“Getting the Virginians on board, that was not the hard part but it still took years to convince the federal government to make this investment and make it here,” said Kaine.
For Hampton Roads, leaders say it will push innovation and start-ups, even offer opportunities in stem education for K through 12 students and local colleges
“This is all about community stakeholder engagement," said Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones. "This is why it’s here in Newport News because of our local partners, our regional partners.”
Officials said the HPDF will have a "hub-and-spoke" model in which Jefferson Lab will partner with California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The two laboratories will host mirrored centralized resources and "enable high-priority DOE mission applications at 'spoke' sites by deploying and orchestrating distributed infrastructure at the spokes or other locations," according to Monday's announcement.
The goal is to speed up 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.
“We’ve got the next generation future here at Jefferson Lab,” said State Senator Monty Mason.
Jefferson Lab leaders expect to see the facility open within the next five years. However, the team of researchers set to work in the building hopes to start their work within a year.