US commits $5 billion to Genesis Mission, funding 278 AI research projects across energy and science

MIT projects selected for funding under US Department of Energy's Genesis Mission

"MIT researchers are proud to be leading and contributing to projects under the Genesis Mission, in vital areas of research that support national priorities," says Ian A. Waitz, MIT's vice president for research. MIT researchers are set to contribute to the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Genesis Mission, with 15 collaborative projects among those selected for funding under Genesis Phase I, DOE announced Wednesday. The Genesis Mission, a national initiative, intends to build "the world's most powerful integrated science discovery platform" by incentivizing cross-sector collaborations that leverage AI, supercomputing, quantum systems, and advanced scientific instruments to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery, and national security. "MIT researchers are proud to be leading and contributing to projects under the Genesis Mission, in vital areas of research that support national priorities," says Ian A. Waitz, MIT's vice president for research. "The Genesis Mission represents a fantastic opportunity to catalyze the power of universities, industry, and the U.S. national laboratories to advance science, technology, and innovation for the benefit of the nation and the world." The DOE announced the initial projects during its Genesis Summit in Washington on Wednesday. The research funding to MIT is pending completion of negotiations toward an award agreement for each project. In phase I, funded project teams will work to demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, and to rigorously evaluate the scientific merit of their approach. Projects under the Genesis Mission are collaborative by design; teams must draw on the expertise of researchers from academia, industry, and/or the national laboratories. Among the selected phase I projects with MIT involvement are those that aim to develop powerful quantum sensors to help explain fundamental questions about the universe; advance knowledge of chemical-free methods to extract rare earth elements; model the behavior of plasma in fusion tokamaks and future fusion reactors; develop digital twins for fusion magnet systems; exploit the self-assembly of biomolecules to design materials with targeted properties; generatively design rotating blades for machinery systems; and more. Phase I projects that identify promising pathways toward transformative capabilities at scale may be considered by DOE for further Genesis Mission funding. Six of the selected projects are to be led by MIT principal investigators (PIs): * AI-Driven Discovery of Electrochemical Separation Methods for Rare Earth ElementsMIT lead: Martin Bazant (Department of Chemical Engineering, ChemE), Chevron Professor in Chemical Engineering and professor of mathematics * AI for Learning Missing Constitutive Structure in Fracture ModelsMIT lead: Laurent Demanet (Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences), professor of applied mathematics and co-director of the MIT Center for Computational Science and Engineering * AI-Driven Quantum Sensing for Precision Tests of Fundamental PhysicsMIT lead: Ronald Garcia Ruiz (Laboratory for Nuclear Science, LNS), associate professor of physics and Thomas A. Frank (1977) Career Development Professor * Multi-Agent Inverse Design of Block Polypeptoids Into Hierarchical NanostructuresMIT lead: Bradley Olsen (ChemE), Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor * CATALYST: Core Accelerated Trajectories with Augmented Learning bY Sim-to-experiment TransferMIT lead: Cristina Rea (Plasma Science and Fusion Center), principal research scientist and division head for data science * Multi-Modal and Multi-Facility Application of the FM4NPP Foundation Model: Silicon Trackers and Electron CollidersMIT lead: Gunther Roland (LNS), professor of physics and division head for experimental nuclear and particle physics MIT researchers are expected to participate in another nine selected projects led by other institutions, companies, and labs: * Framework for Optimized Rotating Blade Design Using Generative Engineering (FORGE)Project lead: GE Vernova Advanced Research CenterMIT lead: Faez Ahmed (Department of Mechanical Engineering), associate professor of mechanical engineering and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Professor * Superconducting Polychronous Computation Near CriticalityProject lead: Argonne National LaboratoryMIT lead: Karl Berggren (Research Laboratory of Electronics), the Julius A. Stratton Professor in Electrical Engineering and Physics * Scalable Agentic Digital Twins for Autonomous Precision FacilitiesProject lead: Texas A&M UniversityMIT lead: Ronald Garcia Ruiz (LNS) * Agentic AI for Real-Time Expedited Discovery from High-Complexity EIC Data StreamsProject lead: Purdue UniversityMIT lead: Philip Harris (LNS), associate professor of physics * Self-Driving Discovery and Co-Design of MXene Memristors for 3D Compute-in-Memory SystemsProject lead: Northeastern UniversityMIT lead: Ju Li (Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, NSE), the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor in Power Engineering and professor of materials science and engineering * A-WILD: AI-driven Workflows for Intelligent Lab DiscoveryProject lead: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)MIT lead: Ju Li (NSE) * A Foundational Generative AI Framework to Advance Water-Energy SecurityProject lead: LBNLMIT lead: Haruko Wainwright (NSE), Atlantic Richfield Career Development Professor in Energy Studies, assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering, and assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering * An AI-Driven Platform for HLW Repository Design and Analysis with Digital Twins, GIS Data Integration, and Surrogate ModelsProject lead: LBNLMIT lead: Haruko Wainwright (NSE) * Toward Physics-Informed Digital Twins for Fusion Magnet SystemsProject lead: LBNLMIT lead: Holger Witte (LNS), associate director of MIT's Bates Research and Engineering Center. "The extraordinary response to this Genesis Mission application process demonstrates that America's scientific community is ready to reimagine how discovery happens," said DOE Under Secretary Darío Gil SM '00 PhD '03, in the DOE's announcement. "Through the Genesis Mission, we are bringing together the nation's leading researchers, institutions, and technology partners to build the next generation of scientific capability. We look forward to seeing these teams demonstrate new research workflows that accelerate discovery and reveal what is possible when AI and science advance together." A complete list of the first Genesis Mission projects selected for award negotiations is available from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Trump administration announces hundreds of "Genesis Mission" AI science projects.

The push to solve issues, including the soaring energy demands of AI data centers, using AI, revealed "more than $5 billion in Federal commitments" across 278 awards and 342 institutions in its list of awards. Big tech companies like Microsoft and Google have announced millions in compute and AI credits for the effort, but this WSJ report says the administration could give political appointees more power over grants, while prioritizing fellowships and awards for individuals could hurt large universities reliant on federal research funding.

Stanford and SLAC to lead Genesis Mission projects

The U.S. Department of Energy announced the first phase of funding for projects using artificial intelligence to tackle the nation's most complex science and technology challenges, including six led by Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Stanford and the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory will lead six Genesis Mission projects that will harness AI to accelerate advances in critical areas including battery waste, understanding the evolution of the universe, and plant genetics. In addition, Stanford and SLAC scientists will partner with other national labs, universities, and industry leaders on 11 other Genesis Mission projects. The funding awards, announced on July 22 at the Genesis Mission Summit in Washington, D.C., represent the first of two phases of awards from the Genesis Mission: Transforming Science and Energy with AI. The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative led by the U.S. Department of Energy, which aims to build the world's most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia, and philanthropy, it will accelerate breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery, and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems, and advanced scientific instruments. "Key discoveries made here at Stanford underpin modern artificial intelligence," said David Studdert, vice provost and dean of research. "Thanks to the Genesis Mission's ambitious agenda, research teams here can continue to contribute to how this technology is refined and deployed to advance science." The DOE sought interdisciplinary teams who would leverage novel AI models and frameworks to address more than 20 national challenges spanning advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear energy, and quantum information science. Dozens of researchers from multiple Stanford schools and institutes, and SLAC, will be leaders or co-investigators on the selected projects. "SLAC's role as a leading collaborator across a range of technologies positions us to advance AI's transformative role in scientific discovery," said SLAC Lab Director John Sarrao. "We appreciate the commitment of the Department of Energy in addressing these national challenges." The following projects will be led by Stanford or SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory: Genetic programming for better plants AI-Driven Design of Gene Expression Programs in Plants Using Foundation Models and High-Throughput DNA Synthesis Current methods for genetic programming in plants are slow and unreliable. This project will build an AI foundation model for plant gene regulation. The team will build the training data, determine additional data and computation needs, and apply the resulting AI model to sorghum, a widely grown feedstock for bioenergy and critical minerals, to refine the model. The trained model, benchmarks, and software interfaces will be released openly through the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission capability catalog, where scientists and engineers in academia, national laboratories, and industry can use them to design plants for the domestic production of valuable chemicals and materials, for recovering critical minerals from U.S. land, and for agriculture that withstands drought and heat. Lead investigator: Jennifer Brophy, an assistant professor of bioengineering in the schools of Engineering and Medicine (Stanford Medicine and Stanford Engineering) Stanford coinvestigators: Anshul Kundaje, an associate professor of genetics at Stanford Medicine and computer science at Stanford Engineering Understanding matter and antimatter in the early universe ORACLE: Observatory for Reasoning, Anomaly Detection, and Causal Learning in Experiments This team is developing an AI system to help scientists analyze data from DUNE, an international experiment investigating one of physics' deepest puzzles: The early universe should have contained almost equal amounts of matter and antimatter, which destroy each other when they meet, yet enough matter survived to form every star, planet, and person. DUNE will search for subtle differences between neutrinos and antineutrinos that could explain how this imbalance arose, while also looking for proton decay and neutrinos from exploding stars. Stanford's system will combine the reasoning capabilities of large language models with knowledge from vast scientific literature to test new ideas against DUNE's complex detector data and accelerate discovery. Lead investigator: Eric Darve, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford Engineering SLAC and Stanford coinvestigators: Kazuhiro Terao, senior scientist in the Fundamental Physics Directorate at SLAC; Hirohisa Tanaka, a professor of particle physics and astrophysics at SLAC and Stanford; Patrick Tsang, staff scientist in the Fundamental Physics Directorate at SLAC; and Gianluca Petrillo, staff scientist in the Fundamental Physics Directorate at SLAC Recovering critical minerals from battery waste A Multi-Agent AI Framework for Discovering Chemical Drivers of Selective Critical Metal Recovery from Complex Battery Waste Recovery of metals such as cobalt, nickel, and manganese from spent lithium-ion batteries could help secure the U.S. supply of critical minerals, but current methods of extraction require large amounts of chemicals and extensive trial and error. This project will assemble multiple AI agents to evaluate strategies across diverse fields, ranging from biochemistry to geology, to propose specific pathways for separating out the metals, testing new approaches, and learning from experiments. Over nine months, researchers aim to recover target metals at 80% purity or better, while benchmarking this approach against conventional literature search and recovery methods. Lead investigator: Ahamed Irshad Maniyanganam, associate scientist at the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center SLAC and Stanford coinvestigators: Frank Abild-Pedersen, co-director of the SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis and senior staff scientist at SLAC, and Jagjit Nanda, executive director of the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center and distinguished scientist at SLAC Modeling the behavior of electrons at quantum scale AI-Driven Transport Optimization of Metallic and Interfacial Quantum Materials (ATOMIQ) As electrical conductors become smaller and smaller in modern technologies, defects and irregularities in the shape of the channel impede the flow of electric current. This creates heat and significantly degrades performance. Understanding the processes leading to this decreased conductivity and identifying new materials to mitigate these effects is a challenging problem. AI techniques will be combined with fundamental physics modeling of the behavior of electrons and experimental studies of materials only a few atoms in width. Lead investigator: Felipe Jornada, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford Engineering and a principal investigator at the Stanford PULSE Institute (PULSE) SLAC and Stanford coinvestigators: Tony Heinz, a professor of applied physics in the School of Humanities and Sciences and of photon science at SLAC, and a principal investigator at PULSE Understanding underground rock fractures Composable Agent Framework for Expert Fracture Design and Uncertainty Quantification Researchers will develop a team of specialized AI agents to help engineers understand and control rock fractures deep underground, a key challenge for tapping geothermal heat and other energy sources. The AI agents will run complex simulations, verify results against the laws of physics, and flag uncertainties for human experts to review. The goal is to transform analyses that can take months or years into near-real-time guidance, making energy development within Earth's crust more reliable and efficient. Lead investigator: Hamdi Tchelepi, the Max Steineke Professor and a professor of energy science and engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Stanford co-investigators: Eric Darve; Louis Durlofsky, the Otto N. Miller Professor and a professor of energy science and engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability; and Søren Taverniers, a physical research scientist at Stanford Engineering Predicting atmospheric rivers Generative models and new observations for improved subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction of atmospheric rivers Atmospheric rivers are narrow bands of moisture-laden air that bring heavy rain and snow to the U.S. West Coast, sometimes triggering floods and power outages. The research team will use generative AI to better estimate the probability of rare, extreme storms and extend forecasts from a few days to several weeks in advance. They will also test whether atmospheric rivers can be detected in faint ground vibrations caused by continuous interactions among the ocean, atmosphere, and Earth's surface, potentially adding a new data source to improve forecasts. Lead investigator: Da Yang, an assistant professor of geophysics in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Stanford co-investigators: Greg Beroza, the Wayne Loel Professor of Earth Science and a professor of geophysics in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability; Ching-Yao Lai, an assistant professor of geophysics in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability; and Noah Diffenbaugh, the William Wrigley Professor and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow and a professor of Earth system science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

US outlines its $5 billion Genesis Mission to boost science with AI - Engadget

Several federal agencies are contributing toward the interdisciplinary research efforts. Today, the White House and the Department of Energy shared some details about the types of research the Genesis Mission will undertake. The Genesis Mission was created via executive order last November with the broadly stated goal of using AI to further scientific discoveries. The Department of Energy was named as a main leader of the endeavor, but at least 15 federal agencies are now involved, including Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Interior, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of War, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce. More than $5 billion has been committed to the Genesis Mission across those departments. Participants will work toward accomplishing National Science and Technology Challenges, making contributions in the form of research awards, funding opportunities, specialized scientific datasets and research facilities. The challenges cover topics in health care like "finding the root causes of chronic disease," energy infrastructure like "scaling the grid to power the American economy," and national defense like "early detection and attribution of biological threats." There is also a set of challenges toward improving the US industries for microelectronics, biology and weapons. Finally, there's general category of "discovery" challenges that cover areas such as space and astronomy, autonomous laboratories, quantum computing, materials creation and modeling living systems. There will also be corporate partners. Microsoft has created a program office called Scientific Partnership Advancing Research & Knowledge, or SPARK, for coordinating the research efforts. It's also backing the Genesis Mission in the form of cloud computing and AI credits.

White House steers $5 billion toward AI research in biggest federal science overhaul in 80 years

Federal agencies pledged over $5 billion to the Genesis Mission, funding 278 AI-for-science projects selected from more than 5,000 applications Federal agencies have committed more than $5 billion to the Genesis Mission, an Energy Department-led effort to use artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific research, White House science adviser Michael Kratsios announced on Wednesday. The initiative selected 278 projects from more than 5,000 applications, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at a summit in Washington. More than 15 federal agencies are contributing research awards, funding, datasets, and facilities to the programme. The Genesis Mission was established by a November 2025 executive order and is part of what the administration describes as the largest marshalling of federal scientific resources since the Apollo programme. Under Secretary for Science Dario Gil, who is directing the effort for the Energy Department, said the mission brings together leading researchers, institutions, and technology partners to build what he called the next generation of scientific capability. The DOE received the largest response rate for any programme in the department's history, according to Gil. The largest single award is a $60 million investment in nuclear energy, funding a three-year project called Prometheus that will use AI to help design, license, manufacture, and operate nuclear reactors. The project team has raised more than $200 million in industry cost share and $30 million in private capital alongside the federal funding. Other funded areas include biomedical research, energy grid reliability, national security, quantum computing, and microelectronics manufacturing. Alongside the Genesis Mission announcement, Kratsios released a report to President Trump titled "Science: A New Golden Age," which the White House described as the first comprehensive rethinking of the US science enterprise in more than 80 years. The report calls for federal research funding to shift toward AI-powered research systems and individual scientists rather than universities, which have historically dominated federally funded scholarship. Agencies with at least $3 billion in research authority will be required to submit implementation plans within 90 days. The funding shift represents a deliberate attempt to reshape roughly $200 billion in annual federal research spending. The report cites the NIH Director's Pioneer Award, which gives selected researchers up to $700,000 annually for five years without requiring a detailed experimental plan, as a model for the kind of flexible, investigator-driven funding the administration wants to expand. The blueprint also identifies national missions including commercial fusion power and returning Americans to the lunar surface by 2028. The announcement comes as the US-China AI competition intensifies, with Stanford's 2026 AI Index finding that the performance gap between the best American and Chinese AI models has collapsed to under three percent despite the US spending 23 times more on private AI investment. The Genesis Mission sits alongside other recent federal AI initiatives, including billions in EXIM export financing for US-built AI infrastructure and executive orders on quantum computing, as part of a broader push to maintain American technological leadership through public funding rather than export controls alone.

LLNL Selected to Lead 10 Projects Under DOE's Genesis Mission | Newswise

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and engineers have been selected to lead 10 Phase I projects under the U.S. Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, applying AI to challenges spanning high-performance computing (HPC), fusion energy, Earth systems science, materials discovery, biology, quantum technologies and fundamental physics. Newswise -- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and engineers have been selected to lead 10 Phase I projects under the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Genesis Mission, applying AI to challenges spanning high-performance computing (HPC), fusion energy, Earth systems science, materials discovery, biology, quantum technologies and fundamental physics. LLNL researchers also will contribute to 19 additional Genesis Mission projects led by partner institutions across the national laboratories, academia and industry. DOE announced the awardees July 22 at the Genesis Mission Summit in Washington, D.C. "These selections reflect LLNL's demonstrated ability to integrate AI, advanced computing, experimental science and multidisciplinary expertise to solve problems of national importance," LLNL Director Kim Budil said. "The Genesis Mission provides an opportunity to take on a remarkable range of scientific challenges and help redefine the pace at which research can move from new ideas to real-world impact." The Genesis Mission is a DOE-led national initiative to build the world's most powerful integrated AI-enabled science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia and philanthropy, it aims to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, science and national security. The Phase I awards aim to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and future investment. Teams will demonstrate workflows integrating AI with scientific investigation and evaluate their potential to accelerate discovery, improve prediction and enhance experimentation. LLNL will lead projects to: * Expand multimodal AI for nuclear and particle physics, integrating data from complementary particle detectors to accelerate scientific insight. * Develop digital twins for laser-plasma acceleration, linking plasma-channel formation, beam dynamics and AI-enabled optimization. * Advance AI-enabled materials discovery by predicting defects and material properties for next-generation computing. * Improve Earth system prediction through scalable AI approaches to turbulence, cloud processes and high-resolution atmospheric modeling. * Develop agentic AI for experimental science, including portable laser diagnostics and interoperable integration across LaserNetUS * Accelerate precision manufacturing for fusion, using AI-enabled data pipelines for additive manufacturing of high-precision targets. * Speed cosmological inference from Rubin Observatory data through fast, uncertainty-aware AI methods. * Advance AI for HPC by characterizing scientific workload performance directly from binary executables. * Design new metalloproteins through biophysics-informed AI approaches that learn and predict metal coordination. * Advance superconducting microsystems and quantum control through physics-reinforced AI. LLNL researchers also will participate in partner-led projects spanning advanced computing, autonomous laboratories, materials, fusion, Earth systems, biology and fundamental physics. More information on LLNL-led projects and partner-led collaborations involving the Lab is available here.

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright Announces First Genesis Mission Projects Selected to Accelerate AI-Driven Scientific Discovery

Nearly 300 projects selected from historic RFA response spanning all 50 states to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, discovery science, and national security. Newswise -- WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the first projects selected under the Genesis Mission Request for Applications (RFA) as part of President Trump's historic Genesis Mission. The national portfolio of research teams will help develop and demonstrate AI-enabled scientific workflows designed to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, discovery science, and national security. Designed to double America's scientific productivity, the Genesis Mission brings together DOE's world-class scientific capabilities, advanced AI, high-performance computing, and the nation's leading researchers to transform how scientific discovery is conducted and strengthen American leadership in science and technology. "America has no shortage of bold ideas or talented scientists, and the response to the Genesis Mission proves that," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. "The 278 projects selected today represent the very best of our nation's scientific enterprise. The remarkable number of high-quality proposals we received demonstrates that America's innovation pipeline is strong, and it points to even greater opportunities for future investment and continued expansion of the Genesis Mission portfolio." The Genesis Mission RFA generated the largest response to a funding opportunity in DOE history. Following a rigorous merit review process, the selected projects represent: * 278 awards: 87 led by DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) National Laboratories, 168 led by universities, 19 led by companies, and 4 led by nonprofit organizations. * 342 participating institutions: 16 DOE and NNSA National Laboratories, 142 universities, 157 companies, 13 nonprofit organizations, and 14 other institutions. These projects will address some of the nation's most pressing energy, scientific, and engineering challenges, including in nuclear energy, critical mineral extraction, intelligent chip design, and commercial fusion energy. Among the selected projects, the largest is a three-year, $60 million investment in nuclear energy that will harness AI to help deliver nuclear facilities faster and safer while cutting operating costs to provide Americans with affordable, reliable, and secure energy. "The extraordinary response to this Genesis Mission application process demonstrates that America's scientific community is ready to reimagine how discovery happens," said Under Secretary for Science Dr. Darío Gil. "Through the Genesis Mission, we are bringing together the nation's leading researchers, institutions, and technology partners to build the next generation of scientific capability. We look forward to seeing these teams demonstrate new research workflows that accelerate discovery and reveal what is possible when AI and science advance together." With today's selections, research teams will begin developing and demonstrating AI-enabled scientific workflows designed to accelerate scientific discovery across DOE's mission areas. Awardees will gain access to the Genesis Mission Platform, including AI agent frameworks, advanced AI models and software made available through industry partners, and high-performance computing resources across DOE's National Laboratories and partner facilities. Together, these capabilities will enable researchers to rapidly design, test, and refine new approaches to accelerate scientific discovery. Read additional information about today's announcement. Learn more about the Genesis Mission. Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that process

Argonne to Lead AI Research Projects Under the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission

New funding supports projects tackling America's toughest scientific challenges Newswise -- From revolutionizing nuclear energy to unlocking the secrets of matter, Argonne's AI-powered research will reshape the future of American science and technology. The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has been awarded funding to lead and collaborate on a sweeping portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven research projects that will accelerate discovery on some of the nation's most complex challenges and redefine how scientists harness AI at the frontiers of science and technology. Argonne's newest Genesis Mission projects will use AI to accelerate nuclear energy deployment, improve energy systems and grid reliability, predict water availability and extreme weather with unprecedented precision, unlock new frontiers in quantum sensing and microelectronics, secure the integrity of scientific workflows and infrastructure, and more. The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative led by DOE, which is building the world's most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia and philanthropy, it is accelerating breakthroughs in energy research, scientific discovery and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems and advanced scientific instruments. "The Genesis Mission represents an important step toward a new era of AI-integrated scientific discovery," said Argonne Director Paul Kearns. "This investment will empower our researchers and partners to pursue bold ideas, accelerate innovation and deliver scientific breakthroughs that will benefit the nation and the world." The new research teams are multidisciplinary partnerships with industry, academia and national laboratories. Argonne is leading projects that will: * Create digital twins -- virtual models powered by AI -- to speed up nuclear fuel recycling and simplify regulatory approval. * Deliver more accurate forecasts of water availability and flood risks, helping ensure reliable energy and infrastructure planning. * Advance AI-driven prediction of precipitation and extreme weather events to reveal new insights into how Earth's systems behave. * Use AI to design microelectronics that operate at extremely low temperatures and with superconducting materials, opening the door to faster, more efficient devices. * Optimize quantum circuit design for nuclear physics, enabling more powerful simulations and advancing quantum computing for science. * Make quantum sensors even more sensitive and accurate with the aid of AI, advancing how we measure and detect things at the smallest scales. * Streamline and prioritize experiments in nuclear astrophysics with AI, accelerating discovery about the universe. * Protect the integrity of scientific research and data by developing advanced AI-powered cybersecurity tools. Argonne is also a partner in Prometheus, an initiative led by DOE's Idaho National Laboratory. The project aims to revolutionize nuclear energy deployment by integrating agentic AI across the entire lifecycle -- from design and licensing to manufacturing and operations. This collaborative effort leverages advanced digital twins, AI-driven workflows and industry expertise to support DOE's mission for reliable, abundant nuclear energy in the United States. The new research projects will deliver foundational AI capabilities that will support the Genesis Mission platform and accelerate cross-cutting scientific discovery. This includes developing advanced scientific workflows, digital twins, agentic AI systems and trustworthy AI infrastructure for managing experiments, tracking data history and spotting unusual patterns. Argonne's expertise in supercomputing, data management and collaborative platforms will provide the computational backbone for integrating AI into large-scale scientific research. The goal of the awards announced today is to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and scale. Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, while rigorously evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation or generate new scientific insights. Additional details about Argonne's Genesis Mission projects are available here. Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.

Berkeley Lab to Lead 13 New Genesis Mission AI Projects

Berkeley Lab will lead 13 new Genesis Mission projects and partner on more than 30 others. Newswise -- Today, the U.S. Department of Energy announced funding for new projects that will harness artificial intelligence to accelerate discovery. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will lead 13 projects and collaborate as a partner on more than 30 others. The projects are part of DOE's Genesis Mission, a historic national initiative that aims to build the world's most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia, and philanthropy, it seeks to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery, and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems, and advanced scientific instruments. Berkeley Lab's contributions to the Genesis Mission build on decades of research in high-performance computing, managing large datasets, and pioneering AI models. Researchers will lead new projects across multiple disciplines, advancing fields including critical minerals, materials, manufacturing, fusion, and energy. "By developing advanced AI tools and combining them with high-quality datasets and high-performance computing, our researchers are maximizing their scientific impact and speeding up discovery," said Kathy Yelick, director of Berkeley Lab. "Beyond that, the Genesis Mission is also an opportunity to pioneer better AI tools and approaches for all of science, which will bring payoffs for generations to come." The goal of the Phase 1 Genesis Mission projects is to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and scale. Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, while rigorously evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation, or generate new scientific insights. The projects that Berkeley Lab leads are: * AI Decodes DOE Data to Protect U.S. Hydropower and Grid: ASPIRE will create an AI-driven workflow using Department of Energy data to improve precipitation forecasting, helping secure U.S. hydropower generation and protecting critical grid infrastructure. * AI-Driven Autonomous Labs for Accelerated Materials Discovery: Researchers will create AI systems that work with autonomous laboratories to design, perform, and learn from experiments, dramatically speeding materials discovery and scientific innovation. * AI-Powered Discovery of Quantum and Optoelectronic Materials: AI powered by physics simulations will model excited states to identify promising quantum and optoelectronic materials, accelerating research for future computing, sensing, and energy technologies. * AI to Predict Water Supplies for Energy with Novel Precision: Scientists will develop an artificial intelligence framework to jointly predict surface and groundwater dynamics nationwide, supporting energy and water security. * AI Workflows to Run DOE Codes in the Cloud: The Agentic HPC Pipeline Initiative (AHPI) will build AI workflows that enable U.S. manufacturers to run powerful DOE research codes on commercial cloud platforms. * Breaking Silos: AI for Nuclear Waste Repository Design: AI will enable a streamlined environment to analyze nuclear waste repository design, dissolving existing silos through a digital-twin approach. * Closing the Loop: AI-Accelerated Alloy Engineering: Researchers will combine AI structure prediction, high-throughput synthesis, and advanced microscopy to accelerate the optimization and design of complex concentrated alloys for extreme environmental applications. * HERALD: AI to Unlock Nuclear Archives: The HERALD project will build an AI platform to vet decades of secure government research, unlocking it for the commercial industry to accelerate nuclear innovation. * Meeting Water-Energy Demand with Local, Actionable Predictions: To predict water resources for energy infrastructure, scientists will use AI to develop a highly accurate prediction system for water availability. * Novel AI Workflow for Critical Minerals in Geosystems: The team will use AI to optimize recovery of critical minerals from copper, molybdenum, platinum, chrome, and nickel mineral deposits. * Physics-informed Digital Twins for Fusion Magnet Systems: AI-enabled digital twins will establish a credible path toward the reliable operation of high-temperature superconducting magnets, supporting future compact magnetic confinement fusion power plants. * Predicting Subsurface Fractures with AI for Energy: Scientists will combine artificial intelligence and geophysical observations to improve prediction of subsurface fractures, advancing geothermal and other energy technologies. * Safely Storing Nuclear Waste with Advanced 3D Models: Researchers will develop AI-assisted 3D geological models that can effectively identify suitable sites for subsurface nuclear waste storage. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab's expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab's world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

Genesis Mission Awards to Accelerate AI Integration Across PNNL Science Mission

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory awards reflect the breadth of its mission. * Genesis Mission investments at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory seed AI advancements across priority research areas. * PNNL leads 16 projects and will contribute to 26 others. * Funding will improve planning and operations across the electric grid, help modernize the nation's nuclear power plants, speed deployment of geothermal energy and automate science workflows, among other projects. Newswise -- RICHLAND, Wash. -- The Department of Energy today announced Phase I funding awards for its Genesis Mission, including 42 that involve research teams from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative led by DOE, which is building the world's most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia and philanthropy, it is accelerating breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems and advanced scientific instruments. "AI is transforming how we discover, innovate and solve problems," said PNNL Director Deb Gracio. "PNNL's significant role in the Genesis Mission positions the Laboratory at the forefront of a once-in-a-generation transformation in how science is conducted, placing our researchers at the center of developing AI-enabled capabilities that will fundamentally accelerate discovery. The Genesis Mission projects will help ensure those advances serve the nation's greatest needs in science, energy and national security. PNNL is proud to contribute our scientific expertise and mission focus to a future where AI expands what is possible." Genesis Mission launch @ PNNL PNNL researchers will lead 16 projects that address urgent national science and energy needs. They will collaborate with academic and industry partners on an additional 26 projects. The Genesis Mission projects led by PNNL will address the following research challenges: * Harnessing AI to help tune quantum computers * Optimizing underground uranium recovery with AI-powered simulations * Understanding how to make geothermal energy systems practical energy suppliers * Embedding AI into physics experiments to improve the path to discovery * Uniting decades of data and expert insight into one AI engine built to accelerate nuclear waste cleanup * Deploying autonomous workflows across the Genesis Mission's computational resources * Using AI to improve decision-making for reliable, affordable power system planning and operation * Using AI to demonstrate improved turbomachinery design and control * Integrating experiments, simulation and operational data to accelerate manufacturing for fuel cells * Leveraging an AI-enabled scientific workflow for improved high-performance microelectronics * Modeling Earth systems for improved seasonal weather prediction using AI * Using AI to predict and manage fractures in oil and gas reservoirs * Using AI to transform how we study and model the turbulence that helps clouds produce rain * Predicting water availability in energy systems using AI-driven watershed modeling * Coupling AI with science to improve algae-based biomass reactors * Enabling AI-driven continuous monitoring of molten salt nuclear reactor operations The goal of the Phase I RFA awards is to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and scale. Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, while rigorously evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation or generate new scientific insights. # # About PNNL Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draws on its distinguishing strengths in chemistry, Earth sciences, biology and data science to advance scientific knowledge and address challenges in energy resiliency and national security. Founded in 1965, PNNL is operated by Battelle and supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit the DOE Office of Science website. For more information on PNNL, visit PNNL's News Center. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.