Department of Energy’s New AI-for-Science ‘Genesis Mission’ Awards Funding to 5 UT Research Projects

Five University of Texas at Austin teams have been awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, an initiative working to harness artificial intelligence for advances in energy dominance, discovery science and national security. UT will lead two of the projects and serve as a partner institution on three others.

The Department of Energy received more than 5,000 applications and awarded funding to 278 projects led by national laboratories, institutions of higher education, companies and nonprofit organizations. Recipients were announced in Washington, D.C., on July 22.

"UT Austin brings together world-class strengths in both energy and AI, along with the national-lab partnerships and computing power to match," said Fernanda Leite, vice president for research. "We're ready to work alongside the national labs and our partners to drive discoveries that strengthen America's energy security and keep the country competitive."

According to the Department of Energy, the Genesis Mission is building the world's most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia and philanthropy, the goal is to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery and national security through a platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems and advanced scientific instruments.

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.

UT researchers will lead interdisciplinary teams from across campus on the following two projects:

• Benjamin Keitz, associate professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, and his team will collaborate with Sandia National Laboratories to combine high-throughput lab experiments with AI to design proteins that can selectively grab rare earth elements from ores, recycled materials and other sources. These rare earth elements are hard-to-source metals essential to modern energy technologies.
• Volkan Isler, professor in the Department of Computer Science and a core member of Texas Robotics, and a team of robotics and materials scientists and engineers will develop safety-focused robots. These will include humanoids and dual-armed machines with dexterous hands that can be easily instructed to handle the repetitive, physically demanding, and hazardous parts of laboratory experiments.

Researchers at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences will support these two projects:

• George Biros, principal faculty member at the Oden Institute and professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, will develop AI tools that predict how metals form their internal structure as they cool and harden, enabling additive manufacturing for metal parts. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is leading this project.
• Karen Willcox, director of the Oden Institute and professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, will help create AI-powered digital twins that follow the components inside a fusion energy reactor from design through years of service so those parts can be built and trusted to survive extreme heat, radiation and chemical stress. This project is led by Sandia National Laboratories.

These four awards are part of Phase I of the Genesis Mission. UT also is part of the team behind the only Phase II award announced so far.

Kevin Clarno, an associate professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and affiliated faculty with the Oden Institute, will lead a team of eight UT researchers as part of the Prometheus project, a $60 million effort led by the Idaho National Laboratory to reduce the time and cost of developing nuclear energy. Building on their earlier work funded by the state of Texas, Clarno and his team will contribute expertise in AI and nuclear reactor digital twin technologies.

Additional recipients of Phase II funding are expected to be announced during the fall. The Department of Energy has allocated $293 million for the total funding opportunity.