The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has received nearly $3 million in funding for two interdisciplinary projects that will further develop artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology. The two grants were awarded by the DOE’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR). They will help Argonne researchers and collaborators pursue AI and machine learning work in the development of methods to tackle massive data sets or create better outcomes where little data is available.
One project is a collaboration with partners from the DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and Johns Hopkins University. For this project, Argonne researchers will develop methods and techniques to work with very large dynamical systems. Combining mathematics and scientific principles, they will build robust and accurate surrogate models. These types of models can dramatically decrease the time and expense of running complex simulations, such as those used to predict the weather or climate.
“The models we build with this award will allow us to obtain dramatic reductions in time-to-solutions and costs,” said Romit Maulik, an Argonne computational scientist and the project lead. Maulik had been working with his colleagues to pursue these novel modeling strategies on nights and weekends. “Now we can ramp up the work we have been doing and test it on scientific use-cases right here at Argonne. For example, instead of using a massive machine to simulate the climate, we could run many smaller cheaper simulations.”