Several federal agencies contribute to interdisciplinary research efforts.
Today, the White House and Department of Energy shared some details about the types of research the Genesis mission will undertake. The Genesis mission was created by executive order last November with the widely stated goal of using AI to advance scientific discoveries. The Department of Energy has been named a key leader in this project, but at least 15 federal agencies are now involved, including the 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 War Department, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce. More than $5 billion has been committed to the Genesis mission in these departments.
Participants will work to address national science and technology challenges, making contributions in the form of research grants, funding opportunities, specialized scientific data sets and research facilities. The challenges cover topics from healthcare such as “finding the root causes of chronic disease,” to energy infrastructure such as “scaling the grid to power the U.S. economy,” and to national defense such as “early detection and attribution of biological threats.” There are also a series of challenges to improving America’s microelectronics, biology, and weapons industries. Finally, there is a general category of “discovery” challenges that cover areas such as space and astronomy, autonomous laboratories, quantum computing, materials creation, and modeling of living systems.
There will also be partner companies. Microsoft created a program office called Scientific Partnership Advancing Research & Knowledge, or SPARK, to coordinate research efforts. It also supports the Genesis mission in the form of cloud computing and AI credits.
