Research

Physics faculty awarded Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission funding for AI-based projects

Kirsten Apodaca — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:02:50 +0000

Physics faculty awarded Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission funding for AI-based projects Kirsten Apodaca Tue, 08/18/2026 - 09:02

Kirsten Apodaca

Six physics faculty from Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder are leading or contributing to new projects awarded more than $1.6 million in highly competitive U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission grants, the agency announced on July 22. Nationwide, only 278 phase-one projects were funded out of over 5,000 proposals.

Yuan Shi and Keith Ulmer are principal investigators on their respective projects, Dennis Perepelitsa is a co-principal investigator on two projects, Jamie Nagle is a co-principal investigator on another, and Xun Gao and Scott Parker are collaborators on the project led by Shi.

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.

“Having six Ģ��Ӱ�� Physics faculty involved across four Genesis Mission projects is incredibly impressive,” says Tobin Munsat, professor and chair of physics. “This reflects the broad strength of our department and demonstrates how our faculty are leading the way in putting AI and quantum technologies to work on some of the most challenging questions in fundamental science.”

AI for analyzing particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider

Ulmer, with collaborators from the University of California San Diego, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Johns Hopkins University, will use AI to analyze largely untapped datasets of particle collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.

Each day, the LHC produces about 4,000 petabytes, or 4 billion gigabytes, of particle collision data used by physicists around the world to better understand the fundamental nature of the universe. Because of the enormous amount of data, current analyses are limited to roughly one in every 10,000 particle collisions, leaving potential anomalies undetected.

By combining high-energy physics expertise, data science, and industry AI methods, Ulmer and his collaborators will develop a system capable of analyzing the full dataset from the LHC. Called the AI-Inclusive Discovery of Anomalies in Scouting (AIDA-Scout), the system will analyze data in real time, automatically adjust to changing detector conditions, and find anomalies in collision data that could lead to new scientific discoveries.

Using quantum computing technologies and AI to simulate plasma for fusion pilot plants

Shi is leading a project to generate plasma simulations needed for fusion pilot plants. Collaborators on the project include Gao and Parker, as well as colleagues from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Infleqtion.

Even today’s most powerful supercomputers cannot produce certain plasma simulations essential for developing fusion pilot plants.

The team will develop new computational methods combining quantum computing, quantum machine learning, and AI to create more efficient and accurate simulations needed for fusion to become a potential energy source.

“This project seeks to prepare the fusion community for the coming generation of quantum computers by creating algorithms and software that can take advantage of quantum hardware as it matures,” says Shi. “The resulting capabilities could significantly accelerate plasma simulations, supporting advances in fusion energy science and scientific computing.”

AI for understanding quark-gluon plasma

Some of the final collisions captured by the sPHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, a nuclear physics research facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory. (Image Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory)

A project led by Baruch College, City University of New York involves Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder physics faculty Jamie Nagle and Dennis Perepelitsa as co-principal investigators. The project’s leadership team includes Yeonju Go, a former postdoctoral researcher in Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder’s experimental nuclear physics group.

The project is designed to better understand the quark-gluon plasma, a phase of matter which only existed microseconds after the Big Bang at temperatures exceeding two trillion Kelvin. At Brookhaven National Laboratory, scientists recreate tiny droplets of quark-gluon plasma by colliding gold nuclei together at nearly the speed of light. These collisions are analyzed by the sPHENIX detector, which acts as a giant camera, capturing approximately 15,000 particle collisions each second.

When creating the quark-gluon plasma, sometimes there are two high energy quarks that scatter, and this project aims to separate and analyze these specific images by using an unsupervised AI framework known as cycle-consistent generative learning.

“We know how quarks scatter at high energy, but we want to understand how they scatter when they’re inside the plasma,” says Nagle.

AI for enhancing the foundation model for nuclear and particle physics

Dennis Perepelitsa is a co-principal investigator on a project led by colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory aimed at enhancing the Foundation Model for Nuclear and Particle Physics (FM4NPP), a large-scale AI model built to extract scientific insights directly from raw detector data.

Foundation models go beyond the more commonly known large language models (LLMs) by being able to perform a variety of tasks. The project will extend the current FM4NPP, which only includes information from one sPHENIX detector subsystem, to include a variety of other detectors, making the model truly multi-modal and enhancing the capability of the detector for quark-gluon plasma measurements. Ultimately, the FM4NPP effort is envisioned as a multi-institution consortium between national labs, universities, and industry to accelerate scientific discovery in a broad set of nuclear and particle physics datasets.

“In modern collider detectors, physics processes leave signatures in multiple subsystems at once, and a comprehensive picture is needed for the highest scientific sensitivity. The foundation model is based on similar principles as commercial LLMs, which is that with enough data and scale, it can make connections beyond the existing non-AI approaches,” says Perepelitsa.

View the Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder press release

Off

Traditional

White

Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder and NIST team use quantum mechanics to make a factory for random numbers

Kirsten Apodaca — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 15:05:23 +0000

Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder and NIST team use quantum mechanics to make a factory for random numbers Kirsten Apodaca Thu, 06/12/2025 - 09:05

A group of scientists from Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder and NIST have built the first random number generator using quantum entanglement to produce verifiable random numbers. The team includes physics graduate student Gautam Kavuri; Ģ��Ӱ�� PREP researchers Jasper Palfree, Dileep Reddy, and Michael Mazurek; alum Mohammad Alhejji (PhDPhys'23); Professor Paul Beale; and NIST scientists and Ģ��Ӱ�� physics lecturers Emanuel Knill and Krister Shalm.

Off

Traditional

White

Chancellor Justin Schwartz in Forbes, "Using Federally Funded University Research To Power America"

Veronica R Lingo — Fri, 16 May 2025 22:45:17 +0000

Chancellor Justin Schwartz in Forbes, "Using Federally Funded University Research To Power America" Veronica R Lingo Fri, 05/16/2025 - 16:45

An engineer makes an electrical connection to the sensor head for Europa Clipper’s dust analyzer. Credit: NASA/Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder/Glenn Asakawa

Support for university research has an impact beyond students, faculty and the local economy—it benefits every American. It drives job creation, protects against reliance on imported critical technology and keeps the U.S. at the forefront of progress.

Chancellor Justin Schwartz writes for Forbes on why federally funded research is smart strategy.

Off

Traditional

White

Professor Meredith Betterton Wins a 2024 AB Nexus Award

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 19:00:59 +0000

Professor Meredith Betterton Wins a 2024 AB Nexus Award Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/25/2024 - 13:00

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry

Recently, the AB Nexus program announced its 2024 seed grant awards, recognizing interdisciplinary research teams from the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder and the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Anschutz Medical Campus. The AB Nexus program fosters intercampus partnerships between scientists, engineers, and physicians to improve human health further. The 2024 AB Nexus awards include projects ranging from AI-optimized pacing for heart failure patients to investigating the health impacts of climate change on Ģ��Ӱ��’s prison population. This year, seven teams received a total of $713,000 in funding for their projects.

Among the recipients is Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Physics Professor Meredith Betterton, who, alongside collaborator Jeffrey Moore from Ģ��Ӱ�� Anschutz, received funding for their project on tubulinopathies, genetic diseases that disrupt brain and nervous system development due to mutated tubulin proteins.

“You can think of tubulin as being like a brick that is stacked next to other bricks to build a road (the microtubule),” Betterton explained. “One of the puzzles about tublinopathies is that the mutation usually occurs in one tubulin gene out of many, so it affects only a minority (usually 25% or less) of the subunits. We aim to understand how a mutation in one small part of a tubulin gene can cause catastrophic defects at the cell and tissue level, ultimately impacting patients.”

Betterton's and Moore’s research proposes that tubulin mutations influence structural changes in neighboring tubulins, amplifying the mutation's effects and creating serious health issues for individuals.

“This award is very exciting for my lab and me because it will provide seed funding for a new direction for our work,” Betterton added. “It’s a fantastic opportunity to potentially help people affected by these diseases.”

Highlighting the collaborative nature of the project, Betterton emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary research: “We will work with the Moore lab at Ģ��Ӱ�� Anschutz to conduct a combined experimental and theoretical study. This award is meaningful because it supports a new idea predicted by our theoretical work, now finding support in experiments. As a theoretical physicist, being able to predict an important new effect is something we all hope to do in our work.”

The AB Nexus program continues cultivating a culture of collaboration and innovation at the University of Ģ��Ӱ��. Its vision is to tackle the toughest challenges in human health through teamwork across diverse fields.

As Vice Chancellor Thomas Flaig noted in the award announcement: “Solving the toughest challenges in human health requires teamwork across a wide range of fields, and we’re very proud of how this program has helped to inspire so many new interdisciplinary research projects across our campuses.”

Off

Traditional

White

Ģ��Ӱ�� Physics Professor Ivan Smalyukh and His Team Receive a Guinness Book of World Records Award for Most Transparent Material

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Ģ��Ӱ�� Physics Professor Ivan Smalyukh and His Team Receive a Guinness Book of World Records Award for Most Transparent Material Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/15/2024 - 00:00

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry

The Soft Matter Physics Smalyukh Research Group holding the Guinness World Record plaque.

Only a few individuals or teams are awarded by the Guinness Book of World Records for specific actions or research they’ve done. One of those teams is led by the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Professor of Physics Ivan Smalyukh, who, with his research group, developed “the World’s Most Transparent Material.”

This material—a synthetic gel-derived material known as aerogel—is around 97-99% transparent, compared to glass, which is around 92% transparent. While many aerogels are being manufactured worldwide, the aerogel Smalyukh and his team have created involves fibers of cellulose, a protein derived from plants. Their aerogel, which has now been successfully patented, can be added to windows to boost thermal insulation, increasing the overall efficiency of a building.

What is an Aerogel?

Aerogels are often described as “frozen smoke” or “solid air” because they are incredibly light and porous. They are made by removing the liquid from a gel, leaving behind a mostly empty solid network.

“There are different ways people define aerogels, but it’s roughly one percent solid by volume and 99 percent air, so it’s mostly air,” explained Smalyukh.

Despite being extremely lightweight, aerogels are excellent thermal insulators, which means they can prevent heat from passing through them. This makes them useful in everything from space exploration to insulating homes.

“In the U.S., unfortunately, we still have almost 50 percent of single-pane windows,” added Smalyukh. “What that means is that you heat the building, especially during winter, but then a lot of that energy is actually lost through the windows.”

By retrofitting these windows with aerogel, the thermal efficiency of these windows can be increased as more heat is trapped inside.

The Challenge with Transparency

Traditional aerogels, however, despite being effective insulators, have drawbacks—they tend to scatter light, making them appear cloudy or opaque. This limits their use in applications where transparency is important, such as windows.

“They are so hazy because you have many tiny particles that are somehow connected to each other in a network. And the length of the pores between these particles ranges from a few nanometers to micrometers.”

That’s where the new aerogel Smalyukh and his team developed, called SiCellA, comes in. Instead of having various pore lengths and particle sizes like other aerogels, the researchers meticulously controlled the size of the particles, the cellulose fibers, within SiCellA, along with the distance between these particles.

“The cellulose fibers we use are typically under 6 nanometers in diameter. Because the particles themselves have a diameter much smaller than the wavelengths of light and the pores in between them are also much smaller, therefore, the scattering of light is very small.”

This produces a higher transparency percentage of the aerogel, allowing it to let through 97-99% of visible light while scattering and reflecting only 1% of the remaining light.

Boosting Energy Efficiency

Infrared thermal imaging photos of different types of treated and untreated window panes mounted into an insulated box. These boxes are designed to hold extreme hot and cold temperatures to test the thermal insulating properties of each window type. The double-paned Insulated Glass Unit (IGU) containing the SiCellA aerogel (Top Left) and the single window pane treated with the SiCellA aerogel film (Bottom Left) show markedly higher thermal insulation properties than a conventional double-paned IGU (Top Right), and a single pane of glass (Bottom Right).

To create comfortable indoor environments, buildings consume around 40% of the energy produced worldwide. Windows and skylights are often the weakest points in a building’s insulation, allowing heat to escape in the winter and letting it in during the summer.

“If we only could stop that heat loss, then we would not need to generate this much energy,” Smalyukh elaborated. “That means shutting down some coal-based power plants or using less fossil fuels.”

By using this SiCellA in windows, buildings could become much more energy-efficient, reducing the need for heating and cooling and lowering energy bills. Because SiCellA is so transparent, it can be used in windows without blocking the natural light that makes spaces bright and inviting. This means that homes and offices can stay comfortable all year round while using less energy, contributing to a more sustainable future.

A Guinness World Record

The incredible transparency of SiCellA hasn’t gone unnoticed. The Guinness Book of World Records has officially recognized it as the most transparent material ever created.

When Smalyukh & team presented their results at an ARPA-E project meeting, the program manager suggested submitting SiCellA to the Guinness Book of World Records to help disseminate the project's outcomes. While Smalyukh and his team did submit the record to Guinness back in 2019, the public release of this World Record wasn’t until much later, as the team was patenting SiCellA at the same time and had to wait for the patents and related publications in Nature Energy to be accepted before breaking the news.

“It was interesting and exciting to see the record entry in the Guinness Book of World Records,” Smalyukh added. “We were happy that everything went through.”

Title Image: Senior Research Associates Vladyslav Cherpak and Bohdan Senyuk hold SiCellA aerogel film, suspended in plastic wrap, in front of the foothills. Image courtesy of the Smalyukh Group

Off

Traditional

White

Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn's latest advance in ptychography featured in Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Today

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 15:51:52 +0000