Professors Marzia Rosati and Cameron Dean have been awarded a grant to study foundation models for nuclear and particle physics experiments as part of the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission Phase I in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (lead institution) and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Foundation models are becoming increasingly common in everyday life, such as in ChatGPT, where they are trained on large, unlabeled datasets and can produce a wide range of outputs depending on a user’s needs. The project will use data collected from high-energy nuclear collisions, which total more than 300 PB in volume, to create a new Foundation Model capable of analyzing these collisions. The model aims to reconstruct the trajectories of particles produced in these collisions using a precision vertexing system from the sPHENIX detector. Each collision produces tens to hundreds of particles and occurs up to 1 million times per second at sPHENIX. The data collected by this experiment has the potential to shed light on the fundamental structure of the universe.
The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative led by the U.S. Department of Energy, 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.
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.