Building a Transdisciplinary, Exascale-Capable Workforce for Geospace Science

Key Points:

●First-principles, self-consistent geospace modeling will require at least exascale-level computing capabilities; however, the technical skills necessary to develop such simulation codes are not taught as part of Heliophysics training/PhD programs.

●Developing exascale Heliophysics codes will require transdisciplinary collaborations between physicists, computer scientists, software engineers, data scientists, and applied mathematics. Such teams must be persistent and formed around specific skills, not specific problems.

●We must have stable, positive long-term career outcomes for Heliophysics scientific developers in order to retain knowledge of and promote future innovation in scientific algorithm development and advanced computing techniques. One such way to do this is by funding long-term scientific programming groups, akin to Heliophysics DRIVE Centers.

●We must have a balance between promoting innovation via funding short-term closed-source development and allowing the open-source community to benefit from and build on the newest scientific modeling techniques.