Challenge
Bridging the gap between scientific discovery and commercially viable products and processes, known as the “valley of death”, remains the biggest challenge in industrial manufacturing. The scaling, modification, or deployment of innovative materials and processes depends on a vast and complex parameter space, requiring the uncovering and integration of underlying physical and chemical principles that hold the key to the next U.S. manufacturing revolution.
AI Solution
Recent advancements in agentic and generative AI present opportunities to accelerate discovery and translational science. These new tools could navigate multi-scale and high-dimensional dynamic systems to find hidden relationships and uncover new manufacturing routes and products. AI can also enable end-to-end digital transformation of industrial manufacturing through integration of real-time data from machines, products, processes, and supply chains into digital twins for continuous human-in-the-loop automated decision support and deployment of emerging advanced manufacturing technologies.
Justification
DOE National Laboratories co-locate world-leading expertise in the discovery, optimization, and scale-up of novel chemistry and materials for energy applications and in smart manufacturing, as well as operate cutting edge synthesis and characterization facilities and high-performance computing resources. At the same time, DOE has a long history of partnering with industry, which has helped cultivate data from industrial facilities. This creates an ideal environment to advance AI-driven manufacturing for U.S. industries today and in the future.
National Impact
Delivering innovations through an efficient, distributed, and adaptive platform capable of real-time decision making and end-to-end intelligence will profoundly transform how we create chemicals and materials foundational to industrial products and advanced energy technologies while strengthening supply chain resilience and competitiveness of American industry to create jobs and economic growth.