Posted 30 July, 2026
Iowa State University is the lead institution in four research projects and university faculty are collaborators on four additional projects that are part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) sweeping Genesis Mission. The awards were announced July 22 in Washington D.C.
The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative to build the world’s most powerful integrated science discovery platform by uniting government, industry, academia and philanthropy. The chosen projects will accelerate breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery and national security through a new platform that combines artificial intelligence (AI), supercomputing, quantum systems and advanced scientific instruments.
Peter Dorhout, Iowa State’s Vice President for Research, said “As an institution, we’re honored and excited to support the Department of Energy in its historic Genesis Mission. The innovations our faculty are spearheading show how intelligent, data-rich tools can open new frontiers and accelerate discovery that delivers profound economic impact to our constituents and stakeholders throughout Iowa and around the nation.”
According to the Genesis Mission Phase I Request for Application (RFA): “The goal . . . is to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and scale. Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, while rigorously evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation, or generate new scientific insights.”