THREE NATIONAL LABORATORIES in the Bay Area will participate in the Genesis Mission, a federal program aimed at accelerating scientific innovation and discovery through the use of artificial intelligence.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park are three of 17 national labs that will be a part of the project.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to launch the Genesis Mission, which is aimed to bolster scientific advancement and help the United States stay ahead in the race for global technology dominance.
Headed by the U.S. Department of Energy, the program will build an integrated AI platform using scientific datasets from each national laboratory to help train models that test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and help accelerate scientific breakthroughs.
“We’re really excited,” said Chris Tassone, associate lab director of energy sciences at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. “This is building on work that we and the other 17 national labs have been doing for the last decade in understanding how we use AI to enable and improve science and technology research.”
One of SLAC’s specialties is researching the universe from its smallest to grandest scales. It has produced some of the largest data sets for subatomic particles and electrons, which could help speed up scientific discovery if integrated into an AI platform, according to Tassone.
“By developing artificial intelligence approaches that are going to impact both of those data streams, it means we’re going to be impacting science everywhere,” he said. “That broad impact is what’s so exciting about Genesis Mission. It’s not just what SLAC is doing, it’s what all 17 national labs can do together.”
Jonathan Carter, associate lab director of computing sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, thinks that the coordinated effort to expand scientific innovation with AI will boost efficiency in scientific research on a national scale.
“We’ve had internal projects to look at how AI can be used to change the way we do all kinds of science,” Carter said. “Now that we have a national initiative that involves all 17 labs, I think we will make progress much more quickly.”
“At the end of the day, our goal is simple: build a system that learns, adapts and delivers results fast enough to give the U.S. a decisive advantage in science and national security.”
Brian spears, AI Innovation Incubator Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Instead of an AI model that is trained on text, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wants to help develop AI models that use other forms of data such as scientific images, geographical data, and molecular structures.
He thinks that the lab is well-positioned to significantly contribute to the Genesis Mission integrated AI platform because of its computing and vast amounts of data.
“LBNL has a lot of data from different kinds of scientific domains. It has genomic data. It has X-ray diffraction data, where you can look at the structure of proteins and other biomolecules,” Carter said. “As well as data, you need computing capabilities to train the models. And we have significant computing capabilities here.”
Designed for ‘decisive advantage’
AI Innovation Incubator Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Brian Spears, says that Genesis Mission is something that the lab has been trying to get started for a long time. Spears is also the technical director for Genesis Mission and will be helping design the integrated AI platform.
“We’re thrilled to see this long-term vision finally come to fruition,” he said in an email.
The lab has already begun using AI to help solve complex scientific problems and bolster national security, background that Spears says will help contribute significantly to the project.
“We have decades of leadership in supercomputing, scientific code development and using data to drive extremely high-consequence decisions,” he said. “We also have teams already applying AI to complex national security and energy problems.”
With the rapid expansion of AI globally, the three laboratories are hoping that they can contribute to the Genesis Mission’s broader effort of using science to enhance national security, accelerate scientific discovery, and position the U.S. as a leader in scientific advancement.
“At the end of the day, our goal is simple: build a system that learns, adapts and delivers results fast enough to give the U.S. a decisive advantage in science and national security,” Spears said. “This is our opportunity to harness AI, science and computing together to win this race. We have a limited window to act, and we intend to meet it.”
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