The Office of Science Advisory Committee has published the Genesis Mission Frameworks for AI-Accelerated National Breakthroughs report.
September 25, 2026
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Darío Gil
Under Secretary for Science
Dr. Darío Gil is Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy. His office is the nation's largest federal sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences, supporting all 17 National Laboratories of the United States, and responsible for programs including advanced computing, fusion, nuclear and high energy particle physics, basic energy sciences, and biological and environmental research. He is the department’s principal advisor on science and technology.
Prior to his current position, Dr. Darío Gil was IBM Senior Vice President and Director of Research, where he was responsible for one of the world’s largest and most influential corporate research labs.
Dr. Gil was elected to the National Academy of Engineering “for his contributions to artificial intelligence and quantum computing” and is a globally recognized leader of the quantum industry. Under his leadership, IBM was the first company in the world to build programmable quantum computers and make them universally available through the cloud.
Dr. Gil is an inventor and an institutional innovator, the force behind the creation of the International Science Reserve, the AI Alliance, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium.
Dr. Gil has served on the President’s Council of Science and Technology Advisors (PCAST) and on the National Science Board (NSB), where he was first member from industry to be elected chairman in 30 years. He has served on numerous boards including the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the New York Academy of Sciences, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the New York Hall of Science, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).
Dr. Gil is the recipient of two honorary doctorates and received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
In an era defined by rapid technological transition, the defining question is not whether artificial intelligence (AI) will transform science and engineering—it will. The real question is whether the United States will lead that transformation or cede it to strategic competitors.
To help chart this path, I charged the Office of Science Advisory Committee (SCAC) Genesis Mission Subcommittee with surveying the broader scientific landscape and assessing how AI can be most effectively applied to accelerate national breakthroughs. Today, I am proud to share their response and report: Genesis Mission Frameworks for AI-Accelerated National Breakthroughs.
The Genesis Mission is a national initiative mobilizing the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories in partnership with industry, academia, federal agencies, international partners, and philanthropy to build a unified scientific AI platform. Connecting high-performance supercomputing, AI, quantum systems, and experimental facilities, the platform is designed to accelerate breakthroughs and tackle 33 national science and technology challenges, from fusion energy to pediatric cancer.
From these critical challenge areas, the advisory committee chose to conduct a deep dive into three specific frontiers, offering strategic insights into how AI-driven convergence can redefine what is possible:
1. Harnessing Biology at Digital Speed
For decades, our ability to read genetic code has outpaced our ability to interpret and engineer it. The committee's assessment highlights how a dedicated AI-biology campaign can bridge this gap, turning biology from an observational science into a predictive, engineerable discipline. Unlocking predictive biological design offers massive potential to scale the global bioeconomy—projected by some analyses to reach $10 trillion by 2050—and secure American leadership in this critical sector.
Through integrated AI-enabled measurement, modeling, and manufacturing loops, the committee outlines the possibility of extraordinary breakthroughs. These include engineering microbes that convert carbon dioxide into cost-competitive jet fuel on the first batch, and the ability to design therapeutics for previously "undruggable" cancer genes in just nine months.
2. AI-Accelerated Fusion Energy
Fusion is the ultimate energy source. However, controlling a burning plasma—which spans six orders of magnitude in space and time—presents massive engineering hurdles. The report explores how AI can turn these fundamental uncertainties into solvable engineering challenges.
Utilizing AI to guide engineering decisions and predict superheated reactions in real time is vital to accelerating progress toward the ambitious national milestone of delivering an operational U.S. fusion pilot plant to the power grid by 2030–2035. By dramatically speeding up design cycles, AI can help secure a tremendous energy source to power our economy.
3. Rebuilding Magnet Sovereignty
Critical rare-earth permanent magnets are essential for electric vehicles, defense systems, and wind turbines, yet the U.S. relies heavily on a single foreign supply chain. To address this vulnerability, the advisory committee proposes an urgent, five-year AI mission to establish "Magnet Sovereignty" by creating a closed-loop domestic learning system.
The report details how using AI to search through millions of material combinations can potentially help discover high-performance magnet formulas that bypass rare and hard-to-get minerals. Simultaneously, deploying intelligent AI sensors across domestic manufacturing lines and automating recycling systems will enable recovery and reuse of critical materials from discarded electronics inside our borders.
The Path Forward
Ultimately, the committee’s findings show that the Genesis Mission offers an opportunity to accelerate discovery, strengthen American competitiveness, power the economy, and secure our energy future. By combining the processing power of our 17 National Laboratories with the talent and curiosity of our scientific community, we can build a future where scientific discovery is no longer bottlenecked by manual trial and error but unleashed to solve our biggest problems.
