The University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) has been selected for a Phase I award under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, a national initiative to harness artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery.
LLE’s project, “Autonomous Implosion Design and Experimental Co-piloting via Physics Grounded Agentic AI,” will build a next-generation AI framework for inertial fusion energy research. The framework combines differentiable physics, foundation-model surrogates, reinforcement learning, and an experimental copilot to rapidly optimize inertial confinement fusion implosion designs and support real-time decision-making during experiments. The goal: lay the technical groundwork for future high-repetition-rate fusion facilities.
Varchas Gopalaswamy, the project’s principal investigator, says, “After every implosion, physicists have to piece together what happened and decide what to change next. That means pulling from years of experimental data and reconciling measurements with complex simulations on a very short timeline, which has historically been extremely difficult. We’re aiming to build an AI system that helps with that work by finding the relevant history, testing possible explanations, and narrowing down what to try next. The scientist is still going to make the call, but the system helps them get there faster and learn more from every shot.”
LLE joins a national portfolio of research teams selected from the largest response to a funding opportunity in DOE history. The Department received applications from all 50 states and ultimately selected 278 projects across 342 participating institutions — including national laboratories, universities, companies, and nonprofits — to develop and demonstrate AI-enabled scientific workflows across energy, discovery science, and national security missions.
“LLE has been a trusted DOE partner in inertial confinement fusion research for decades, and this award is a vote of confidence in that partnership,” said Chris Deeney, director of LLE. “The University of Rochester just celebrated 50 years of LLE’s leadership science and technology in fusion and lasers. In the celebration, we cut the ribbon to open the future path to the next 50 years. AI will be a key technology in the future. We’re grateful to the Department of Energy for this opportunity.”
Learn more about the Genesis Mission.