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The U.S. Department of Energy has unveiled a set of 26 science and technology challenges intended to power the Genesis Mission and accelerate innovation by integrating artificial intelligence into national research infrastructure. Building on President Trump’s Executive Orders that support the Genesis Mission and remove barriers to AI leadership, the initiative is framed as a strategic effort to pair the government’s unique datasets with the experimental capabilities of the DOE. As an organized national effort, it aims to transform how quickly scientific insights move from idea to impact by leveraging the combined strengths of public laboratories, industry partners, and academia.
DOE leadership describes the challenges as spanning the agency’s core missions in discovery science, energy systems, and national security, with each topic chosen for its potential to produce clear public benefits. Under Secretary for Science Dr. Darío Gil emphasized that coupling DOE facilities and data with modern AI can make discovery proceed at the speed of imagination, while White House representatives framed the list as an invitation to researchers and innovators nationwide. The program also plans to link cutting-edge compute resources and experimental platforms into a single, integrated environment designed to double U.S. R&D productivity and impact within a decade.
Priority challenge areas
The first tranche of challenges focuses on strategic domains where AI can deliver outsized gains. Examples include using AI-driven grid planning to modernize the electrical system; digitizing eight decades of nuclear research to create a secure, searchable repository of historic data; making particle accelerators adaptive and autonomous for faster results; and applying predictive AI to materials design so function-first materials are realized far faster than before. Other priorities are underground modeling for energy resource development, achieving autonomous laboratories that automate experiments end-to-end, revitalizing advanced manufacturing to tighten design-to-production loops, discovering new quantum algorithms with AI, and re-securing U.S. leadership in microelectronics.
Grid modernization, nuclear data, and reactor innovation
One concrete area aims to scale the nation’s power system using AI to improve planning, interconnection, operations, and resilience. DOE projects that intelligent tools could enable decisions that are 20–100 times faster and could improve electricity cost and reliability by up to 10 percent. In parallel, the effort to digitize nearly a century of nuclear research will create a secure archive that supports future energy and security planning, and the Genesis Mission will also prioritize AI-assisted design and deployment of advanced reactors and fusion concepts to produce abundant and resilient energy sources.
Autonomous experimentation, materials, and manufacturing
Another set of challenges targets the experimental and production pipeline. By combining generative and agentic AI with automated labs, DOE expects to accelerate discovery of new drugs, materials, and energy technologies while improving reproducibility and data volume for training models. The plan calls for AI workflows that translate performance goals into material candidates, shrinking development timelines from decades to months, and for systems that bridge research with industrial production to strengthen supply chains and create American manufacturing jobs.
Implementation, partnerships, and next steps
To realize these ambitions the Genesis Mission will build an integrated platform connecting the world’s leading supercomputers, DOE experimental facilities, proprietary and open datasets, and commercial AI tools. The work is intended to be collaborative: DOE will coordinate with its National Laboratories, industry, and academic partners to move selected challenges toward demonstrable results that benefit the public. Senior officials have highlighted the importance of AI to energy affordability, grid security, and national defense, and they view the challenge list as a starting point that can expand across federal agencies and private partners. For the full list of topics and details, DOE directs interested stakeholders to the department’s official Genesis Mission resources.