The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, at Michigan State University, in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, was chosen to receive a Genesis Mission Phase I award from the U.S. Department of Energy. The project will develop artificial intelligence, or AI, tools — specifically, physics-informed “digital twins” — that could transform how heavy-ion accelerators and isotope separators are operated.
The project, titled “Towards Self-Evolving, Physics-Informed Digital Twins of Ion Accelerators and Isotope Separators,” is led by Peter Ostroumov, associate director of the Accelerator Systems Division and professor at FRIB, and Brahim Mustapha, accelerator physicist at Argonne National Laboratory.
The award is among the inaugural national portfolio of projects the DOE announced 22 July under the Genesis Mission Request for Applications, or RFA, as part of the Genesis Mission, designed to double America’s scientific productivity.
The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative led by the DOE, which is building the world’s most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia and philanthropy, it is accelerating breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems and advanced scientific instruments.
Out of the largest funding response in DOE history — resulting in 278 awards across 342 participating institutions — the FRIB-Argonne collaboration places MSU at the leading edge of AI-driven scientific innovation.
MSU operates FRIB as a user facility for the DOE Office of Science, or DOE-SC, with financial support from and furthering the mission of the DOE-SC Office of Nuclear Physics. Hosting the most powerful heavy-ion accelerator, FRIB enables scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes in order to better understand the physics of nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security and industry. As a DOE-SC user facility based at a university, FRIB advances the goals of the Genesis Mission by harnessing artificial intelligence to accelerate discovery in nuclear science and develop the workforce.
The goal of the Phase I RFA awards is to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and scale. Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, while rigorously evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation or generate new scientific insights.
“At MSU, our land-grant mission has always been about tackling huge challenges that make a real difference. Receiving this Genesis Mission award alongside Argonne National Laboratory underscores the power of pairing top university talent with national lab resources,” said Shashank Priya, vice president for Research and Innovation at MSU. “By integrating physics-informed AI directly into FRIB’s operations, we’re helping scientists spend more time making discoveries in nuclear medicine, energy and fundamental science that create solutions with broad societal benefit.”
FRIB and the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System, or ATLAS, are DOE Office of Science user facilities that provide scientists with beams of rare isotopes to study the properties of atomic nuclei and their applications. Because experiments require different ion species and beam characteristics, operators must frequently adjust thousands of accelerator parameters to deliver beams with the required energy, intensity and purity. The process is highly complex and requires significant expertise.
The FRIB-Argonne team will develop physics-informed digital twins — virtual models grounded in the underlying physics of accelerator systems that continuously learn from operational data. By combining AI with established physics models, the project will create adaptive digital twins that provide a powerful new tool for accelerator optimization and control. The digital twins will provide a safe, virtual environment to test and optimize machine settings before applying them to physical hardware. Over time, the digital twins will become more accurate as they learn from real-world operations. The long-term goal is to create an integrated digital representation of the accelerator and isotope separator systems rather than optimizing each component independently. Demonstrating success in Phase I establishes the framework to extend the digital twin architecture across both the entire FRIB and ATLAS facilities under a potential Phase II award.
“It’s an honor for the FRIB team to be part of the historic Genesis Mission,” Ostroumov said. “Transforming a complex facility like FRIB into a more efficient, autonomous and productive scientific user facility requires tightly integrating AI into every stage of rare-isotope production. This project is an important step toward that vision.”
