UConn team wins DOE Genesis Mission award

A UConn research team has received one of the Department of Energy’s inaugural Genesis Mission awards, a federal program funding AI-related projects aimed at accelerating scientific breakthroughs in energy, discovery, and national security. The first cohort included 278 awardees selected from several thousand applicants nationwide.

Led by Wei Ren, an associate professor of natural resources and the environment, the project will develop an AI-powered digital twin of the Northeast U.S. The virtual model will combine satellite observations, field measurements, and numerical models to show how water and chemicals move across surface and subsurface environments.

The award provides $525,000 to UConn and $225,000 to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The team includes UConn researchers Emmanouil Anagnostou, Zhi Li, and Bo Tao, along with PNNL senior research scientist Glenn Hammond. The work is expected to support forecasting of groundwater supplies, carbon transport, coastal water quality, geothermal energy deployment, and underground carbon storage.