One of the women behind the world’s most powerful supercomputer is honored for her work

Thuc Hoang, deputy assistant deputy administrator for advanced simulation and computing at the National Nuclear Security Administration, recently won the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal.(Courtesy Partnership for Public Service)

It’s the world’s most powerful supercomputer. Its speed and size are immense and it helps the government perform some of the most important simulations for national defense.

One of the women behind El Capitan has just been awarded one of the highest honors bestowed on the federal workforce.

“It feels great. I wish the rest of my staff also had been named and recognized, but I couldn’t ask for more, so that was a nice thing,” said Thuc Hoang, deputy assistant deputy administrator for advanced simulation and computing at the National Nuclear Security Administration, about winning the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal.

Often called “Sammies,” these medals are awarded every year to federal employees who are responsible for noteworthy accomplishments.

Hoang came to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam in the 1980s and joined the Department of Energy’s computing team in the 1990s.

“I decided that I wanted to work for the nation — it wasn’t even a question. DOE was my first employer, and it will hopefully be my last,” she said.

She led the National Nuclear Security Administration project to build El Capitan in Livermore, California. The supercomputer is about half the size of a football field.

It is so powerful that if your laptop at home started doing calculations at the start of the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, El Capitan would surpass it in less than half a second.

It can perform 1.742 quintillion calculations per second. It is 10 times more powerful than the next supercomputer.

Hoang told WTOP it has one very important job.

“Supercomputers in our program simulate the phenomena of the nuclear weapons performance,” she said. “We haven’t tested them since 1992 and these weapons effects are very, very complicated. They can’t be studied in any big experimental facilities.”

Nearly two decades ago, Hoang began advocating for computers of this scale and in 2020 her division began its work of building El Capitan, with it going into operation this past January.

Beyond simulations for the nuclear arsenal, El Capitan can be applied to climate modeling, astrophysics and nonnuclear weapons.

“We will explore a lot of the artificial intelligence potential,” she added.

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