Two Yale researchers have received funding awards from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Genesis Mission, a national initiative that aims to build the world's most powerful integrated science discovery platform.
Sarah Demers, a professor of physics and chair of Yale's Department of Physics, and Farren Isaacs, a professor of molecular, cellular and development biology and of Biomedical Engineering, will receive Phase 1 RFA awards, which are designed to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and trade. Demers and Isaacs are members of Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Isaacs also has an appointment in the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science.
Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, while evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation, or generate new scientific insights, according to the DOE.
The awards were announced during the Genesis Mission summit in Washington, D.C.
The Genesis Mission, a national initiative led by DOE and its 17 National Laboratories, unites government, industry, academia, and philanthropists to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery, and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems, and advanced scientific instruments.
Demers said her lab will use the DOE funding for its work on the Mu2e experiment at Fermilab, which is based in Illinois and looks for particle physics discoveries beyond the Standard Model.
"We will search for charged-lepton flavor violation [a rare type of particle interaction], motivated by many possible extensions to the standard model of particle physics that would answer some of our current open questions," she said. "We are set to begin data-taking over the upcoming few years, with the experiment currently in commissioning using cosmic rays, and we will move to a muon beam soon."
