Today, the White House and the Department of Energy shared some details about the types of research the Genesis Mission will undertake. The Genesis Mission was created via executive order last November with the broadly stated goal of using AI to further scientific discoveries. The Department of Energy was named as a main leader of the endeavor, but at least 15 federal agencies are now involved, including Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Interior, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of War, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce. More than $5 billion has been committed to the Genesis Mission across those departments.

Participants will work toward accomplishing National Science and Technology Challenges, making contributions in the form of research awards, funding opportunities, specialized scientific datasets and research facilities. The challenges cover topics in health care like “finding the root causes of chronic disease,” energy infrastructure like “scaling the grid to power the American economy,” and national defense like “early detection and attribution of biological threats.” There is also a set of challenges toward improving the US industries for microelectronics, biology and weapons. Finally, there’s general category of “discovery” challenges that cover areas such as space and astronomy, autonomous laboratories, quantum computing, materials creation and modeling living systems.

There will also be corporate partners. Microsoft has created a program office called Scientific Partnership Advancing Research & Knowledge, or SPARK, for coordinating the research efforts. It’s also backing the Genesis Mission in the form of cloud computing and AI credits.