DOE Genesis Mission: Transforming Science and Energy with AI

There is an informational webinar about this RFA on Thursday, March 26, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. ET. Registration instructions and other details will be posted DOE’s registration page for the webinar.

The Office of Research will be attending this webinar but interested applicants should also RSVP.

FOA Issue date	March 17, 2026
Submission Deadline for Phase I Applications	April 28, 2026 11:59 PM EDT
Submission Deadline for Phase II Letters of Intent	April 28, 2026 5:00 PM EDT
Submission Deadline for Phase II Applications	May 19, 2026 11:59 PM EDT
Submission Deadline for Phase II Applications resulting from Phase I Awards	December 17, 2026 11:59 PM EDT
Expected dollar amount of individual awards	Phase I: $500,000 – $750,000  Phase II: 3X-5X Phase I
Expected award project period	Phase I: 9 months  Phase II: 3 years
Cost share	Not required for basic and applied research, except for-profit entities1

Program Description: Highlights 

Proposal teams are encouraged to leverage the extensive scientific and data resources of the DOE, the National Laboratories, U.S. industry, and academia. Interested academics who are unfamiliar with the DOE lab enterprise can also use the Consortium (referenced above) to find potential partners. It is essential to understand the program goals and priorities of the different DOE agencies and Offices and align with the program goals and priorities of the specific program in the FY 2026 Focus Areas (see solicitation for details). Further, Institutional or third-party commitments to proposed activities are strongly encouraged for all applications (provision of space, facilities, equipment or resources at no or reduced charge; time for faculty; scholarship support of students; waiver of facilities and administrative costs, in whole or in part; third-party contributions such as state, private entities, etc.). It is important to note that DOE prefers collaborative applications, which can be submitted by teams of multiple institutions. Each of these must indicate that it is part of a collaborative project/group and every partner institution must submit an application through its own sponsored research office. Each multi-institutional team can have only one lead institution. 

It is impermissible for any team member, including DOE/NNSA National Laboratories or industry participants, to make their involvement in a response to this solicitation conditional upon any agreement, understanding, or expectation that another team member will restrict its pursuit of or commitment to participating in other separate responses. 

Topic and Focus Areas 

Proposals must address at least one of twenty-one topic areas (listed below) and at least one of the topic area’s specific focus areas (described in the solicitation). Phase I proposals are limited to a single focus area, and Phase II proposals must identify a primary focus area to address but may select secondary focus areas. Applications institutions are limited to no more than one application as the lead institution per focus area for Phase I and Phase II applications combined. However, there is no limitation to the number of applications for which the institution is not the lead in a multi-institution team using collaborative applications. 

Topic Areas: Each applicant must address a Topic Area and a related Focus Area: 

1. Re-envisioning Advanced Manufacturing and Industrial Productivity	12. Designing Materials with Predictable Functionality
2. Scaling the Biotechnology Revolution	13. Enhancing Particle Accelerators for Discovery
3. Securing America’s Critical Minerals Supply	14. Unifying Physics from Quarks to the Cosmos
4. Delivering Nuclear Energy that is Faster, Safer, Cheaper	15. Predicting U.S. Water for Energy
5. Accelerating Delivery of Fusion Energy	16. Scaling the Grid to Power the American Economy2
6. Transforming Nuclear Restoration and Revitalization	17. Unleashing Subsurface Strategic Energy Assets
7. Discovering Quantum Algorithms with AI	18. HPC Code Curation, Translation, and Development for Accelerated Scientific Discoveries
8. Realizing Quantum Systems for Discovery	19. AI For Scientific Reasoning
9. Recentering Microelectronics in America	20. Cybersecurity for AI-driven Science Workflows
10. Securing U.S. Leadership in Data Centers	21. Artificial Intelligence in Fluid Flow for Energy Components and Technologies
11. Achieving AI-Driven Autonomous Laboratories	(Topics 18-21 are crosscutting needs of the Genesis Mission Platform)

Note: A key target of Topic 2 is to develop AI innovations that significantly reduce data requirements, enabling more efficient model training and reducing context-dependent predictions of phenotypic outcomes directly in field settings. This may look like developing AI/digital twin models to streamline R&D, predict and address the challenges and complexities involved in the biological system, bioreactor design, and process scale-up and integration to enable cost-effective production of biofuels, biochemicals, and bioproducts. 

Phased Program Structure 

Phase I: Goal to provide quantitative analysis of whether proposed approach’s trajectory is toward a transformative scientific capability, justifying further investment. Likely will comprise most FY2026 awards. 

Teams will design and demonstrate a clear, tangible research workflow that incorporates AI with concrete evaluation of the potential for AI advantage. Success may include: demonstrating increased predictive power or scientific insight from appropriately-curated data; more tightly coupling data and experiments to validate hypotheses; building new models and analyzing their impact on discovery speedup; identifying scaling metrics that show how performance improves with more data or computing resources; improving and speeding up experimental workflows (e.g., through automation or AI-informed parameters); other proposed metrics that the team would like to be considered. Additionally, Phase I awards will be expected to demonstrate progress towards demonstrating AI advantage in the selected focus area through a go/no go evaluation at 6 months. 

Phase I applicants must propose small teams with partner institutions from at least two of the following categories:  

1. DOE/NNSA National Laboratory or a Scientific User Facility 
2. Industry³
3. Institute of Higher Education (IHE)/Non-profit/Other

Phase II⁴: During the second phase, meritorious Phase I and new Phase II teams will pursue the promising directions identified during the first phase. DOE envisions a level of effort (including team size and budget) at 3 to 5 times the initial phase. Receipt of a Phase I award will not be a prerequisite for submitting a letter of interest and application for Phase II. If a team believes they have already achieved the goals of Phase I awards, they may apply directly for a Phase II award in FY26.  

In Phase II, applicants will be expected to propose large teams with at least one partner institution from categories: 

1. DOE/NNSA National Laboratory or a Scientific User Facility⁵ and
2. Industry³
3. Institute of Higher Education (IHE)/Non-profit/Other, (inclusion of lead or partner institutions from category are strongly encouraged but not required) 

Phased Program Expectations: 

FY26: Teams that believe they have already met the Phase I goals may apply directly for a Phase II award instead of a Phase I award.

FY27: At the end of 6-months, Phase I teams will undergo a go/no go review. Phase I teams have the option to request up to a 3-months extension to their go/no go review date to complete planned tasks, such as experiments. Only a small fraction of Phase I teams will be selected for Phase II awards.

Footnotes

[1] For-profit entities (lead or subawardee) should provide 20% cost share for basic and applied R&D and 50% of total project costs for demonstration and commercial application tasks.

[2] Submissions to this focus area must include an electricity sector team member (either as a prime or sub recipient) that can provide real data as part of the development, demonstration, and validation of the proposed technology.

[3] It is envisioned that DOE funding for all industrial partners combined could be up to 20% of the total requested budget for specific project-relevant research efforts.

[4] An amended RFA will be issued to provide updated instructions about Phase II LOI and application.