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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 55 records · Page 3

Enhancing Cluster Identification in Atom Probe Tomography Data Using Transfer Learning

Atom Probe Tomography (APT) is a powerful technique for visualizing the atomic-scale distribution of solutes in materials, but quantitative cluster analysis of APT datasets remains a challenge due to the need for subjective parameter selection in clustering algorithms. While distance-based and density-based methods such as HDBSCAN are widely used, their performance is highly sensitive to user-defined parameters, which undermines reproducibility and accuracy. This study proposes an image-based, deep learning-aided workflow for automating parameter selection and cluster detection in APT data analysis. By projecting 3D APT point clouds onto 2D planes, we leverage pretrained convolutional neural networks (ConvNeXt-Tiny and ResNet-50) through transfer learning to predict the number of clusters present in synthetic datasets. The output is used to guide K-means clustering and estimate HDBSCAN parameters, specifically minimum cluster size and minimum sample points. This approach reduces reliance on manual parameter tuning, improving consistency and scalability. The methodology demonstrates the feasibility of using image-based deep learning for interpreting complex spatial patterns in APT data, enabling faster and more objective analysis. The complete workflow and code are made publicly available to support reproducibility and future research.

Density-based clustering↗

Automated segmentation of soft X-ray tomography: Native cellular structure with submicron resolution at high-throughput for whole-cell quantitative imaging in yeast

Soft X-ray tomography (SXT) is an invaluable tool for quantitatively analyzing cellular structures at suboptical isotropic resolution. However, it has traditionally depended on manual segmentation, limiting its scalability for large datasets. Here, we leverage a deep learning-based autosegmentation pipeline to segment and label cellular structures in hundreds of cells across three Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains. This task-based pipeline uses manual iterative refinement to improve segmentation accuracy for key structures, including the cell body, nucleus, vacuole, and lipid droplets, enabling high-throughput and precise phenotypic analysis. Using this approach, we quantitatively compared the three-dimensional (3D) whole-cell morphometric characteristics of wild-type, VPH1-GFP, and vac14 strains, uncovering detailed strain-specific cell and organelle size and shape variations. We show the utility of SXT data for precise 3D curvature analysis of entire organelles and cells and detection of fine morphological features using surface meshes. Our approach facilitates comparative analyses with high spatial precision and statistical throughput, uncovering subtle morphological features at the single-cell and population level. This workflow significantly enhances our ability to characterize cell anatomy and supports scalable studies on the mesoscale, with applications in investigating cellular architecture, organelle biology, and genetic research across diverse biological contexts.

Chen, Jianhua [Lawrence Berkeley National Laborato↗

Image Labeler: Label Earth Science Images for Machine Learning

The application of machine learning for image-based classification of earth science phenomena, such as hurricanes, is relatively new. While extremely useful, the techniques used for image-based phenomena classification require storing and managing an abundant supply of labeled images in order to produce meaningful results. Existing methods for dataset management and labeling include maintaining categorized folders on a local machine, a process that can be cumbersome and not scalable. Image Labeler is a fast and scalable web-based tool that facilitates the rapid development of image-based earth science phenomena datasets, in order to aid deep learning application and automated image classification/detection. Image Labeler is built with modern web technologies to maximize the scalability and availability of the platform. It has a user-friendly interface that allows tagging multiple images relatively quickly. Essentially, Image Labeler improves upon existing techniques by providing researchers with a shareable source of tagged earth science images for all their machine learning needs. Here, we demonstrate Image Labeler’s current image extraction and labeling capabilities including supported data sources, spatiotemporal subsetting capabilities, individual project management and team collaboration for large scale projects.

Acharya, Ashish↗

TOWARDS RAPID RESPONSE UPDATES OF POPULATIONS AT RISK

Understanding population at risks has been a focus of the LandScan program through its development of population estimates. With advancements in computer vision, deep learning technologies and access to High Performance Computing (HPC) and high resolution imagery, population estimates are now modeled at the building level. However, when those patterns are disrupted, rapid updates to population distribution estimates are needed to support humanitarian aid and response. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently adapted an existing deep learning building footprint extraction model in development of a scalable approach to Building Damage Assessments (BDA). This new opportunity opens the possibility of automating BDA to support rapid population distribution estimate updates for geographic areas involved in geopolitical conflicts or natural events for humanitarian aid and response or where to focus recovery efforts. In addition, incorporate social surveys to further model human behavior under conflict or other scenarios that disrupt normal patterns of life.

Urban, Marie↗

Deep Learning Methods for Symbolic Calculations in HEP

This project develops machine learning methods to accelerate symbolic calculations in high-energy physics. Using sequence-to-sequence transformer models, we construct frameworks to predict squared amplitudes and related quantities for Standard Model processes, including quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, and electroweak interactions. The results demonstrate that deep learning can successfully learn complex symbolic relationships and provide a scalable approach to symbolic computation with potential applications in precision calculations and collider phenomenology.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DeepThermo: Deep Learning Accelerated Parallel Monte Carlo Sampling for Thermodynamics Evaluation of High Entropy Alloys

Since the introduction of Metropolis Monte Carlo (MC) sampling, it and its variants have become standard tools used for thermodynamics evaluations of physical systems. However, a long-standing problem that hinders the effectiveness and efficiency of MC sampling is the lack of a generic method (a.k.a. MC proposal) to update the system configurations. Consequently, current practices are not scalable. Here we propose a parallel MC sampling framework for thermodynamics evaluation—DeepThermo. By using deep learning–based MC proposals that can globally update the system configurations, we show that DeepThermo can effectively evaluate the phase transition behaviors of high entropy alloys, which have an astronomical configuration space. For the first time, we directly evaluate a density of states expanding over a range of ~e 10,000 for a real material. We also demonstrate DeepThermo’s performance and scalability up to 3,000 GPUs on both NVIDIA V100 and AMD MI250X-based supercomputers.

Yin, Junqi↗

Hardware-accelerated inference for real-time gravitational-wave astronomy

The field of transient astronomy has seen a revolution with the first gravitational-wave detections and the arrival of multi-messenger observations they enabled. Transformed by the first detection of binary black hole and binary neutron star mergers, computational demands in gravitational-wave astronomy are expected to grow by at least a factor of two over the next five years as the global network of kilometer-scale interferometers are brought to design sensitivity. With the increase in detector sensitivity, real-time delivery of gravitational-wave alerts will become increasingly important as an enabler of multi-messenger followup. In this work, we report a novel implementation and deployment of deep learning inference for real-time gravitational-wave data denoising and astrophysical source identification. This is accomplished using a generic Inference-as-a-Service model that is capable of adapting to the future needs of gravitational-wave data analysis. Overall, our implementation allows seamless incorporation of hardware accelerators and also enables the use of commercial or private (dedicated) as-a-service computing. Based on our results, we propose a paradigm shift in low-latency and offline computing in gravitational-wave astronomy. Such a shift can address key challenges in peak-usage, scalability and reliability, and provide a data analysis platform particularly optimized for deep learning applications. The achieved sub-millisecond scale latency will also be relevant for any machine learning-based real-time control systems that may be invoked in the operation of near-future and next generation ground-based laser interferometers, as well as the front-end collection, distribution and processing of data from such instruments.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

AI-Enhanced Computational Tools for Entry Systems Modeling

To advance the understanding of complex atmospheric entry phenomena, NASA’s Entry Systems Modeling (ESM) team [1] has developed high-fidelity computational tools addressing multiscale challenges, from material microstructures to full-scale heatshield response. This abstract highlights a subset of ESM tools, focusing on AI integration to enhance workflows and predictive modeling. - PuMA [2] computes effective material properties from high-resolution micro-CT scans, supporting TPS analysis for NASA missions. - TomoSAM [3] automates 3D tomography dataset segmentation for PuMA using the Segment Anything Model, reducing manual effort and improving accuracy. - PATO [4] models porous reactive materials under extreme conditions, with advancements such as unified solvers, mechanical erosion, and TPS coatings for NASA missions. - arcjetCV [5] employs deep learning to analyze arc jet test footage, measuring recession rates, shape changes, and shock standoff distances, bridging simulations, and experiments to reveal TPS ablation behavior. - ARCHeS [6] simulates arc heater plasma flows, modeling turbulence, radiation, and electromagnetic interactions to optimize arc heater performance, validate TPS under extreme conditions, and serve as a foundation for developing digital twins of arc heater facilities. - SPARTA [7] simulates rarefied hypersonic flows and gas-surface interactions for planetary entry missions, leveraging GPU architectures for scalable and efficient aerothermal and ablation analyses. AI-driven solutions, such as deep learning segmentation, have streamlined workflows in ESM tools and still hold significant potential to further accelerate processes and enhance automation in entry systems modeling. [1] Haskins, J.B. (2023), [2] Ferguson, J.C. (2018), [3] Meurisse, J.B.E. (2018), [4] Semeraro, F. (2023), [5] Quintart, A. (2024) [6] Meurisse, J.B.E. (2022), [7] Plimpton, S.J. (2019)

Predictive Modeling↗

Large Scale Caching and Streaming of Training Data for Online Deep Learning

The training of deep neural network models on large data remains a difficult problem, despite progress towards scalable techniques. In particular, there is a mismatch between the random but predetermined order in which AI flows select training samples and the streaming I/O patterns for which traditional HPC data storage (e.g., parallel file systems) are designed. In addition, as more data are obtained, it is feasible neither simply to train learning models incrementally, due to catastrophic forgetting (i.e., bias towards new samples), nor to train frequently from scratch, due to prohibitive time and/or resource constraints. In this paper, we study data management techniques that combine caching and streaming with rehearsal support in order to enable efficient access to training samples in both offline training and continual learning. We revisit state-of-art streaming approaches based on data pipelines that transparently handle prefetching, caching, shuffling, and data augmentation, and discuss the challenges and opportunities that arise when combining these methods with data-parallel training techniques. We also report on preliminary experiments that evaluate the I/O overheads involved in accessing the training samples from a parallel file system (PFS) under several concurrency scenarios, highlighting the impact of the PFS on the design of the data pipelines.

data pipelines↗

Unleashing the Power of Industrial Big Data through Scalable Manual Labeling

Big Data plays a central role in the remarkable results achieved by Machine Learning (ML) and especially Deep Learning (DL) in the recent years. However, the difficulty in obtaining a reasonable amount of labeled samples limits ML/DL application in various domains, including industrial equipment and system monitoring. In this paper the need for methods that turn manual labeling into a scalable process is highlighted. A real world problem is analyzed for which weak supervision methods, successfully employed in other domains, did not produce acceptable results. An alternative approach based on clustering ensembles is described and tested, achieving good performance.

Paes Leao, Bruno↗

Physics Informed Reinforcement Learning for Power Grid Control using Augmented Random Search

Wide adoption of deep reinforcement learning need to overcome several challenges in energy system domain, including scalability, learning from limited samples, and high-dimensional continuous state and action spaces. In this paper, we integrated physics-based information from the normal generator operation state formula in the reinforcement learning agent's neural network loss function, and applied an augmented random search agent to optimize the generator control under dynamic contingency. Simulation results demonstrated the reliability performance improvements in training speed, reward convergence, sampling efficiency, scalability, and transferability.

physics informed ML, Physics Informed Neural Netwo↗

Distributional Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Emergency Frequency Control

Emergency frequency control is one of the most critical approaches to maintain power system stability after major disturbances. With the increasing number of grid-connected renewable energy sources, existing model-based methods of frequency control are facing up with challenges of computational speed and scalability for large-scale systems. In this paper, the emergency frequency control problem is formulated as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) and solved through a novel Distributional Deep Reinforcement Learning (DDRL) method, namely the distributional soft actor critic (DSAC) method. Compared with other RL methods that only estimate the mean value, the proposed DSAC model estimates the distribution of value function over returns. This advancement can lead to more insights and knowledge for the agent, with the benefit of a much faster and more stable learning process, and the improved frequency control performance. Here, the simulation results on IEEE 39-bus and IEEE 118-bus systems demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of proposed models, as well as the advantage compared to other state-of-the-art DRL algorithms.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Dataset for Leveraging CryoEM and AI-Driven Morphological Feature Analysis for Insights on Bacterial Structures

This repository hosts an AI-assisted image segmentation and analysis pipeline for Pantoea sp. YR343 cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) datasets. The workflow automates membrane thickness measurements, flagella detection, and field-of-view (FOV) screening from low-dose, high-resolution cryoEM micrographs eliminating the need for slow manual annotation. By integrating deep-learning based segmentation (YOLOv11) with quantitative post-processing, this toolkit provides a scalable and reproducible way to study bacterial morphology under hydrated, near-native conditions. The GitHub repository for AI-based tools for cryoEM bacteria ultrastructures can be found here: https://github.com/Sireesiru/Cryo-EM-Ultrastructures/tree/main

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

On the Stochastic Stability of Deep Markov Models

Deep Markov models (DMM) are generative models which are scalable and expressive generalization of Markov models for representation, learning, and inference problems. However, the fundamental stochastic stability guarantees of such models have not been thoroughly investigated. In this paper, we present a novel stability analysis method and provide sufficient conditions of DMM's stochastic stability. The proposed stability analysis is based on the contraction of probabilistic maps modeled by deep neural networks. We make connections between the spectral properties of neural network's weights and different types of used activation function on the stability and overall dynamic behavior of DMMs with Gaussian distributions. Based on the theory, we propose a few practical methods for designing constrained DMMs with guaranteed stability. We empirically substantiate our theoretical results via intuitive numerical experiments using the proposed stability constraints.

Drgona, Jan↗

Using a physics-informed neural network and fault zone acoustic monitoring to predict lab earthquakes

Abstract Predicting failure in solids has broad applications including earthquake prediction which remains an unattainable goal. However, recent machine learning work shows that laboratory earthquakes can be predicted using micro-failure events and temporal evolution of fault zone elastic properties. Remarkably, these results come from purely data-driven models trained with large datasets. Such data are equivalent to centuries of fault motion rendering application to tectonic faulting unclear. In addition, the underlying physics of such predictions is poorly understood. Here, we address scalability using a novel Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN). Our model encodes fault physics in the deep learning loss function using time-lapse ultrasonic data. PINN models outperform data-driven models and significantly improve transfer learning for small training datasets and conditions outside those used in training. Our work suggests that PINN offers a promising path for machine learning-based failure prediction and, ultimately for improving our understanding of earthquake physics and prediction.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Astronomaly at scale: searching for anomalies amongst 4 million galaxies

ABSTRACT Modern astronomical surveys are producing data sets of unprecedented size and richness, increasing the potential for high-impact scientific discovery. This possibility, coupled with the challenge of exploring a large number of sources, has led to the development of novel machine-learning-based anomaly detection approaches, such as astronomaly. For the first time, we test the scalability of astronomaly by applying it to almost 4 million images of galaxies from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey. We use a trained deep learning algorithm to learn useful representations of the images and pass these to the anomaly detection algorithm isolation forest, coupled with astronomaly’s active learning method, to discover interesting sources. We find that data selection criteria have a significant impact on the trade-off between finding rare sources such as strong lenses and introducing artefacts into the data set. We demonstrate that active learning is required to identify the most interesting sources and reduce artefacts, while anomaly detection methods alone are insufficient. Using astronomaly, we find 1635 anomalies among the top 2000 sources in the data set after applying active learning, including eight strong gravitational lens candidates, 1609 galaxy merger candidates, and 18 previously unidentified sources exhibiting highly unusual morphology. Our results show that by leveraging the human–machine interface, astronomaly is able to rapidly identify sources of scientific interest even in large data sets.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗

MDLoader: A Hybrid Model-Driven Data Loader for Distributed Graph Neural Network Training

Scalable data management is essential for processing large scientific dataset on HPC platforms for distributed deep learning. In-memory distributed storage is preferred for its speed, enabling rapid, random, and frequent data access required by stochastic optimizers. Processes use one-sided or collective communication to fetch remote data, with optimal performance depending on (i) dataset characteristics, (ii) training scale, and (iii) interconnection network. Empirical analysis shows collective communication excels with larger mini-batch sizes and/or fewer processes, whereas one-sided communication outperforms at larger scales. We propose MDLoader, a hybrid in-memory data loader for distributed graph neural network training. MDLoader features a model-driven performance estimator that dynamically selects between one-sided and collective communication at the beginning of training using Tree of Parzen Estimators (TPE). Evaluations on NERSC Perlmutter and OLCF Summit show MDLoader outperforms single-backend loaders by up to 2.83 × and predicts the suitable communication method with 96.3% (Perlmutter) and 94.3% (Summit) success rate.

Bae, Jonghyun↗

DDStore: Distributed Data Store for Scalable Training of Graph Neural Networks on Large Atomistic Modeling Datasets

Graph neural networks (GNNs) are a class of Deep Learning models used in designing atomistic materials for effective screening of large chemical spaces. To ensure robust prediction, GNN models must be trained on large volumes of atomistic data on leadership class supercomputers. Even with the advent of modern architectures that consist of multiple storage layers that include node-local NVMe devices in addition to device memory for caching large datasets, extreme-scale model training faces I/O challenges at scale.We present DDStore, an in-memory distributed data store designed for GNN training on large-scale graph data. DDStore provides a hierarchical, distributed, data caching technique that combines data chunking, replication, low-latency random access, and high throughput communication. DDStore achieves near-linear scaling for training a GNN model using up to 1000 GPUs on the Summit and Perlmutter supercomputers, and reaches up to a 6.15x reduction in GNN training time compared to state-of-the-art methodologies.

Choi, Jong Youl↗