Energy Department identifies 26 Genesis Mission challenges

The Department of Energy has identified 26 challenges that it’s looking to tackle in order to advance the Genesis Mission, representing broad problems such as “bridging the gap between scientific discovery and commercially viable products” and more precise issues like “preventing nuclear materials and information from falling into the hands of rogue and dangerous actors.”

In the 26-page document accompanying the announcement Thursday, each challenge is accompanied by a proposed AI “solution,” justification and national impact. 

“These 26 challenges are a direct call to action to America’s researchers and innovators to join the Genesis Mission and deliver science and technology breakthroughs that will benefit the American people,” Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a statement. “We look forward to expanding the list of challenges across federal agencies to bring even greater impact to the Mission.”

The Energy Department’s group of national labs, industry partners and academia will also contribute to the efforts. 

Execution of the Genesis Mission, which originated from a November executive order, has hit a quick pace thus far. From allocating funding for complementary projects and setting up accountability structures to bringing on 24 research partners and kickstarting pilots, the agency has prioritized a speedy tempo. 

“If there was one single failure mode that I see in all of this, it’s that we don’t move fast enough,” Darío Gil, DOE’s under secretary for science and Genesis Mission lead, said when testifying before lawmakers in December. “We just have to act like our life depends on it.”

Earlier this week, DOE launched a Genesis Mission Consortium to strengthen alignment of the public-private partnerships involved in the initiative. As part of the consortium, working groups will be set up to focus on model validation and reliability, data governance and compliance standards, federated data sharing and research throughput. 

During an event last week, Gil teased both the challenges announced Thursday and the consortium. 

“Teams can form across the United States to go and tackle those challenges,” Gil said, adding that releasing the challenges would add some “specificity” to the mission. “Then, we’re going to continue to stand up AI supercomputing capacity.”

In addition to standing up more capacity, the Energy Department is expected to release more challenges, as mentioned by Kratsios and Rian Bahran, deputy assistant secretary of energy for nuclear reactors. Bahran said in a LinkedIn post that the 26 challenges announced Thursday were part of the “first set.” 

The DOE is also working to meet several initial deadlines set for later this year that were outlined in the executive order.