By Kritika Agarwal
On July 22, Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced the first projects selected as part of the Genesis Mission, a national initiative to double the pace of scientific discovery in the next decade.
The mission – the result of a November executive order by President Trump – seeks to harness the power of artificial intelligence to “empower researchers to solve the hardest scientific challenges” currently facing the nation. Many AAU members are represented as both leads and as institutional partners in the 278 projects selected for the Genesis Mission’s initial national portfolio of research teams.
Wright noted that selected projects “represent the very best of our nation’s scientific enterprise.” He added: “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.”
According to DOE, 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.”
DOE noted that “[t]hese 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.” The full list of projects selected for award negotiations is available here.
Many of the selected universities and participating institutions are AAU members, and many awards feature researchers at multiple AAU institutions as leads or as collaborators with researchers at national laboratories and other institutions. Here’s a sampling of some of their projects:
- Carnegie Mellon University will lead three projects as part of the Genesis Mission. CMU researcher Herman Herman “will lead a project to develop AI-based tools that enables autonomous laboratories with different equipment to work together as a connected research ecosystem;” Artur Dubrawski will lead a project “to develop an AI framework that could transform how critical minerals are discovered, helping reduce the time, cost and uncertainty of exploration;” and a group of CMU researchers led by Rachel Mandelbaum “will develop AI-enabled infrastructure that will make it easier for scientists to combine and analyze data from some of the world’s largest astronomy experiments.”
- Researchers at Stony Brook University secured six Genesis Mission awards. One project led by researcher Emre Salman “will develop an AI-enabled framework to make microelectronics more resilient in harsh, radiation-intensive environments,” and another led by Nengkun Yu will “develop an AI-assisted approach to help scientists create and adapt complex software for high-performance and quantum computing systems more efficiently.”
- The University of Utah also received multiple awards. Utah researcher Rohan Basu Roy will lead a project “to help address one of artificial intelligence’s newest challenges: the growing demand for electricity to power AI data centers.” Professor Steven Krueger is leading a team that brings together researchers from multiple institutions to “combine cloud-chamber observations, advanced computer modeling, and artificial intelligence to better understand how clouds produce rain.”
- Northwestern University secured four projects, including one led by Randall Q. Snurr, which “will search for new materials capable of separating lithium isotopes, a critical step toward enabling the future of fusion energy” and another led by Edward “Ted” Sargent that “will use AI to coordinate a new manufacturing process for converting captured carbon into polyethylene, one of the world’s most widely used plastics.”
DOE hosted the recipients of the awards in Washington on July 22 for its Genesis Mission Summit, where it publicly launched the mission. (At another summit that took place earlier this year, three AAU university presidents highlighted the role of universities in advancing science through AI and strengthening STEM education and AI literacy.)
According to Science, “All but one of the winners of the first awards will receive so-called phase 1 funding of $500,000 to $750,000 for 9 months of work. If that work is successful, a team can apply for an additional phase 2 award of $6 million to $15 million.”
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy also issued a press release on July 22 noting that the Genesis Mission commitments add up to more than $5 billion.
It noted that more than 15 federal agencies (including the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services and National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Defense) “will contribute research awards, funding opportunities, specialized scientific datasets, and research facilities to the National Science and Technology Challenges,” which are a part of the Genesis Mission. It is unclear, however, from where the $5 billion in funds are coming.
Kritika Agarwal is assistant vice president for communications at AAU.