AI, quantum computing, fusion energy remain Energy’s top research priorities

Emerging technology research dominates the Energy Department’s coming scientific agenda, with agency leadership moving in sync with the Trump administration’s larger goal of ensuring the U.S. wins the global race to artificial intelligence dominance.

Darío Gil, Energy’s undersecretary for science, testified before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on the agency’s technological priorities — most notably the new Genesis Mission unveiled by President Doanld Trump last month. 

“This mission, which we envision as our generation's Manhattan or Apollo scale project, will multiply the return on taxpayer investment and solidify America's global technological and strategic leadership,” Gil said. 

In addition to clarifying the Genesis Mission’s role as an “integrated discovery platform” that will marry national laboratories, academia and industry partners to deliver new AI applications, Gil unveiled the first investment installment of $320 million for the American Science Cloud and the Transformational Model Consortia. 

These two initiatives, which were both created from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will further help disperse funding to Energy’s national laboratory network to begin curating data sets to train new scientific AI models.  

“At the core, we're doing two things: we're building a platform, and we are constructing a portfolio of scientific and engineering challenges for energy, national security and discovery science,” Gil said. 

Although Genesis is primarily focused on developing new and experimental AI applications and running them on the nation’s network of high-performance supercomputers, Gil also shared other emerging tech sectors that Energy is prioritizing and aiming to incorporate into the Genesis infrastructure.

Quantum computing is among the top fields to be eventually incorporated into the AI and supercomputing infrastructure Energy is scaling. Gil, who previously oversaw IBM’s scientific research portfolio that included multiple quantum information science and technology assets, testified that the convergence of AI and quantum computing will serve as “a scientific and technological revolution.”

This perspective will provide an opportunity to merge more advanced AI models with relatively immature quantum computing systems.

“We recognize that AI and quantum are not just tools, but foundational elements of new supercomputing platforms,” Gil said. “AI and quantum computing offer a fundamentally new paradigm for understanding the natural world. They are the new scientific instruments of our time. And just like telescopes and microscopes transform how we see the very large, the very far and the very small, AI and quantum supercomputers are going to transform how we make sense of the very complex.”

Gil also vocalized support for the National Quantum Initiative Act Reauthorization, a landmark appropriations bill specifically for quantum information sciences that has stalled in Congress since its lapse in 2023. 

Beyond quantum computing and AI, Gil said accelerating scalability of nuclear and fusion development is another top policy priority for Energy. He added that following Energy’s release of a formal roadmap to developing commercial fusion power in October, the department is working with private sector and academic stakeholders on a holistic look at what the U.S. needs to do to scale fusion power plants in the early 2030s.