The University of Arizona has won five awards from the U.S. Department of Energy's new Genesis Mission, a national push to use artificial intelligence to accelerate discoveries in energy, national security and environmental science. The university was one of only four institutions to receive five lead awards in the first Genesis funding round, which selected 278 projects from 342 universities, national laboratories, companies and nonprofits across the country.
The Genesis Mission aims to combine AI, high-performance computing and quantum technologies to create faster, more efficient research methods. Teams will test whether AI-powered workflows can improve predictions, refine experiments and produce practical benefits for society.
Projects span cybersecurity to quantum computing
Marwan Krunz, an electrical and computer engineering researcher, will lead a project to make AI-powered scientific systems more resistant to cyberattacks. His team will build physics-informed AI tools to protect research applications in fusion energy, power grids and climate science.
Scott Saleska, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, will use AI to model how water, plants, microbes and minerals interact underground. The work draws on data from Biosphere 2's Landscape Evolution Observatory and is designed to help environmental models adapt to different ecosystems more quickly.
Pooja Siwach, an assistant physics professor, will develop an AI framework that determines the most efficient mix of classical computing, quantum computing or hybrid systems for complex nuclear physics problems. The result could aid both scientific research and national security. Separately, pharmacy researcher Travis Wheeler will apply AI to predict protein movement and function, speeding up work in bioenergy, agriculture and environmental science.
In a fifth project led by Argonne National Laboratory, hydrology and atmospheric sciences professor Laura Condon is contributing to an AI foundation model that forecasts water availability, groundwater movement and flood hazards across the continental United States.
Arizona's growing investment in AI research
The awards reflect the university's broader expansion into AI. In 2025, it appointed its first chief AI officer, and it has built interdisciplinary collaborations linking engineering, environmental science, biology, computing and physics. By fusing deep domain knowledge with advanced AI for Science & Research, the funded projects aim to accelerate outcomes in energy systems, cybersecurity, quantum technologies and environmental forecasting.
Why this matters for science and research professionals
The Genesis Mission's approach signals a shift in how federal research dollars are being directed: toward teams that can combine computing, quantum hardware and domain expertise under one roof. For researchers and lab managers, the winning projects offer a practical template for integrating AI into experimental design, model validation and security planning. The concentration of awards at a single institution also shows that interdisciplinary career paths and dedicated AI leadership roles are becoming a competitive advantage in winning large-scale research funding.
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