Insider Brief
- University of South California (USC) is leading a Department of Energy Genesis Mission research team developing AI models to improve turbulence prediction for scientific and engineering applications.
- The project combines expertise from USC, the University of Michigan, and Argonne National Laboratory to develop physics-informed AI methods for complex simulations.
- The research aims to improve computational approaches for applications including aviation, energy infrastructure, manufacturing, and advanced scientific discovery.
As part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, USC will lead a national research team developing a new kind of AI to predict turbulence — one of engineering’s oldest challenges — with applications across energy, transportation and manufacturing.
University of South California (USC) is among the first universities selected to help lead the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, a national initiative that unites the country’s 17 national laboratories, universities and industry to explore artificial intelligence for scientific discovery.
As part of the initiative, USC will lead a multi-institutional research team developing a new kind of AI designed to tackle turbulence, a longstanding challenge in physics and engineering that affects technologies people rely on every day. More accurate predictions could help engineers build more efficient aircraft, strengthen the nation’s energy infrastructure and speed the development of technologies critical to U.S. competitiveness.
“At USC, we’re building an ecosystem where human-centered AI, scientific discovery and cross-sector collaboration reinforce one another,” said Gaurav Sukhatme, interim dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and inaugural director of the newly named USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.
“The Genesis Mission reflects that vision by bringing together universities, national laboratories and industry to advance discovery while preparing the next generation of scientists and engineers,” he said.
Groundbreaking AI for the Science of Motion
Turbulence shapes both the natural world and the technologies that power everyday life, from airflow over airplane wings and wind turbines to fuel flowing through engines and pipelines. The same physics also drives storm systems, ocean currents and smoke rising from a fire.
Yet accurately predicting turbulence remains one of engineering’s toughest challenges. Although it follows the laws of physics, tiny differences in starting conditions can quickly grow into dramatically different outcomes, making it difficult for engineers to predict how turbulence will behave in real-world systems.
As part of the Department of Energy Genesis Mission, USC is leading a collaboration with the University of Michigan and Argonne National Laboratory to develop AI that can accelerate one of the most computationally demanding tasks in science: predicting turbulent flows.
“Consider the airflow around a commercial aircraft,” said Iván Bermejo-Moreno, associate professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at USC Viterbi and the project’s principal investigator. “Predicting how turbulence evolves means following millions of tiny motions in the air as they interact — more than even today’s fastest supercomputers can calculate.”
Instead, scientists use mathematical models to estimate the smallest turbulent motions. Bermejo-Moreno’s team is developing AI trained on the laws of physics and advanced computer simulations to recognize recurring patterns in turbulence and predict how they will evolve.
“Researchers have applied AI to turbulence before, but our approach is different,” Bermejo-Moreno said. “We’re teaching AI to recognize the flow structures themselves — the same kinds of swirling patterns you see in waterfalls or certain clouds — and use them to improve our predictions.”
The approach could make scientific simulations faster and more accurate, allowing researchers to solve problems that would otherwise take years to compute or remain beyond today’s computing capabilities.
Although the team’s first application is turbulence, the underlying AI could eventually improve scientific simulations across disciplines, enabling researchers to tackle problems that are too complex, too costly or too computationally intensive to solve today.
Trojans Shaping the Nation’s AI Workforce
National initiatives like the Genesis Mission depend on more than breakthroughs in AI; they depend on the scientists and engineers who will develop and apply them. USC is helping strengthen that talent pipeline through research, training and collaboration.
USC graduate students regularly participate in the Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing — one of the nation’s premier high-performance computing programs — and many go on to internships and careers at the Department of Energy’s national laboratories. This year, two students from Bermejo-Moreno’s lab will participate.
USC is also helping prepare the next generation of AI and advanced computing researchers through intensive summer schools led by USC Viterbi’s Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and the USC Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC). The programs give students hands-on experience with the AI and computing tools that will power tomorrow’s scientific discoveries.
Science Across Sectors
USC’s role in the Genesis Mission builds on years of investment in artificial intelligence, interdisciplinary research and cross-sector collaboration.
Under President Beong-Soo Kim, USC has expanded those efforts with the launch of the USC Stevens School and broader investments in human-centered AI connecting engineering, computing, medicine, the sciences and the arts — creating new opportunities for researchers to work across disciplines and alongside partners in private industry and government.
For Bermejo-Moreno, the Genesis Mission is a natural extension of USC’s longstanding collaborations with the national laboratories and industry, bringing together the expertise needed to translate cutting-edge research into real-world impact. His Computational Aerospace Lab at USC Viterbi has relied for years on the labs’ world-class supercomputing resources to tackle scientific problems that would otherwise be impossible to solve.
Now, through the Genesis Mission, USC joins a network of 17 national laboratories, universities and industry leaders working to harness AI for scientific discovery — an effort that advances the USC Stevens School’s mission while helping train the researchers who will carry that work forward.
“Every actor, every player, brings expertise,” Bermejo-Moreno said. “National laboratories contribute world-class expertise in high-performance computing and increasingly in AI. Industry is advancing AI technologies at an extraordinary pace, while universities contribute fundamental research, innovation and the next generation of scientists and engineers.”
“The sum of those parts is much greater than what any one of us could do alone,” Bermejo-Moreno said.
