Nuclear engineers Paul Wilson and David Smith are among five University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers to each receive between $500,000 and $750,000 for nine-month projects under the Genesis Mission, a national effort aimed at leveraging AI to address some of the nation’s most pressing energy, scientific, and engineering challenges.
Genesis Mission Phase I awards support teams as they design and test research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation. The projects, spanning fusion to critical minerals, are among 278 funded awards to national labs, companies, universities and non-profits in order to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems and advanced scientific instruments.
UW-Madison earned more awards than any other public university in the nation, tying with Stanford University and coming in just behind the six granted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in terms of overall number of awards.
Wilson, the Grainger Professor of Nuclear engineering, is leading a project aimed at improving fusion energy systems by advancing a critical component of a fusion reactor called a breeding blanket. The work will rely on both AI and machine learning to accelerate improved breeding blanket design.
The goal is to reduce the time it takes to design an optimal configuration. “With that improved performance methodology, we will determine optimal blanket configurations, developing a large data set used to train machine learning models that can further accelerate the optimization process,” says Wilson.
Smith, a scientist who works in the lab of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics Associate Professor Benedikt Geiger, will lead a project in collaboration with Semin Joung, a UW-Madison nuclear engineering and engineering physics scientist, and Ryan Coffee, a scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Their work is focused on advancing fusion energy by using advanced AI systems to process large streams of experimental data in real time at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego, California. Their approach is intended to enhance plasma control, a critical part of magnetic fusion energy. “This funding allows our team to rapidly validate the technologies and predictive models needed to bring commercial fusion energy closer to reality,” Smith says.
Other Genesis Mission projects with ties to the College of Engineering include a fusion energy project led by UW-Madison spinoff company Realta Fusion and one led by SHINE Technologies, a Janesville, Wisconsin company spun out of engineering research.
These projects reflect the College of Engineering’s commitment to focusing its talent, partnerships and research strengths on the challenges that will define the next generation of scientific and technological progress, says Devesh Ranjan, Grainger Dean of the College of Engineering. “Through our Engineering Moonshots initiative, we have invested in areas of growing national importance—including fusion energy, AI-enabled autonomous systems and critical minerals—and these awards reinforce the strength of that strategy. We are especially proud to work alongside industry partners such as SHINE and Realta Fusion, because those collaborations help accelerate the path from breakthrough discoveries to real impact.
The Genesis Mission brings together DOE’s national laboratories, universities, industry and other partners to collaborate on efforts spanning energy, science and national security. It is focused on using AI and advanced computing to support scientific research and deliver tangible benefits to society.
“The Genesis Mission recognizes that today’s most complex scientific and technological challenges cannot be solved by any one institution alone. Each partner brings unique strengths that, together, can accelerate discovery and innovation,” says Dorota Brzezinska, UW-Madison’s vice chancellor for research.
Other UW-Madison projects to receive Genesis funding include a project to investigate how large AI models can learn from and connect data across multiple areas of physics (Mariel Pettee, professor of physics, in collaboration with researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Kentucky); a project to develop an AI system designed to dramatically speed up the recovery of copper and other critical minerals from U.S. deposits that are currently difficult or uneconomical to access (Athena Nghiem, professor of geoscience, with Ekion Pty Ltd. located in Australia and Thunderstone Inc. in San Francisco); and a project to design more efficient supercomputers (Matt Sinclair and Shivaram Venkataraman, professors of computer sciences, with a variety of subject matter experts from the University of Virginia, Fermilab and Oak Ridge National Lab).
“We are proud to have UW-Madison recognized at the genesis of Genesis for its research strengths and the opportunity to contribute novel partnerships and workforce development approaches for the benefit of the nation,” says Brzezinska. We are translating research into real-world impact, true to the Wisconsin Idea, and preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers with the skills needed to lead and succeed in a future with AI.”