Haonan Ling, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCF, is joining the U.S. Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, a nationwide initiative that uses AI to accelerate scientific discovery. His project targets biomanufacturing, where scaling up processes for fuels and chemicals is slow and prone to failure.
The Genesis Mission brings together interdisciplinary teams to develop new AI models and research workflows for challenges in advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical materials, energy, and quantum information. It's part of a broader push to apply AI to science, a topic AI for Science & Research covers in depth.
Winston Schoenfeld, UCF vice president for research and innovation, said the mission "harnesses the collective strengths of the nation's leading institutions across academia, industry, and government to accelerate the pace of discovery." He said UCF's participation reflects the expertise of its researchers and students.
An AI digital twin for biomanufacturing
Ling's contribution is an AI digital twin - a virtual replica of a bioprocess - that predicts and optimizes performance. The goal is better process monitoring, decision-making, and scale-up for producing fuels and chemicals.
"The challenge is that conventionally scaling up biomanufacturing is slow and prone to failure, creating a need for smarter tools to accelerate development," Ling said. "If successful, this project could significantly accelerate the development and deployment of sustainable biomanufacturing for fuels and chemicals, making the process faster, cheaper and less risky."
Who's working on it
The project includes UCF researchers at different career stages. Pinzhen Lin, who starts a doctoral degree at UCF's College of Optics and Photonics in Fall 2026, will lead development of the project's real-time sensor. Jirui Fu, a UCF mechanical engineering PhD graduate and postdoctoral scholar, will also assist. Ling is collaborating with Kansas State University Assistant Professor Yian Chen and researchers Ajinkya Pal, Jason DesVeaux, and Evan Komp from the National Laboratory of the Rockies.
The project is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science through the Genesis Mission, a Transforming Science and Energy with AI initiative.
Beyond the lab
Ling sees the AI digital twin framework as a potential commercial platform for industries beyond energy. "It could lower the barriers for industrial partners to adopt bio-based processes, helping drive the transition toward a more sustainable economy," he said.
"As an early-career researcher, I feel very fortunate to lead and participate in a mission of this scale," Ling said. "What excites me most is the opportunity to apply this technology to solve real-world problems, and to see how it can be integrated with the rapidly advancing field of AI."
Why this matters for IT and development professionals
The project shows how AI digital twins combine real-time sensors, predictive models, and process optimization - systems thinking that mirrors software and infrastructure design. For developers and IT professionals, the underlying work - sensor integration, model deployment, data pipelines - falls squarely in the territory covered by AI for IT & Development. As federal research projects like Genesis scale up, demand for professionals who can build and maintain AI-enabled workflows will grow.
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