George Mason computer scientist receives DOE Genesis Award for breakthrough AI–HPC research

George Mason University computer science professor Keren Zhou has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a prestigious Genesis Award, part of the Trump Administration's national Genesis Mission-an initiative designed to accelerate scientific discovery through advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing.

The Genesis Mission aims to build an integrated scientific discovery platform that unites national laboratories, universities, industry partners, and philanthropic organizations to drive breakthroughs in energy, discovery science, and national security. Nearly 300 projects were selected nationwide following what DOE described as the largest response to a funding opportunity in its history.

Zhou's project, "An End-to-End AI Framework for Performance Prediction and Optimization in High-Performance Computing (HPC) Applications," received $750,000 in Phase I funding, supporting a nine-month research period. His work tackles a challenge that affects nearly every field that relies on supercomputers-from climate science to drug development. Today, even small changes to scientific software can require days or months of trial-and-error testing to make sure programs run efficiently on different machines. That slows down research and delays discoveries.

Zhou's goal is to remove that bottleneck. "Today's HPC applications may need days or even months of tuning every time a parameter changes or a new hardware configuration is introduced," he explained. "We want to eliminate that costly cycle by building a proxy model that can rapidly estimate performance-reducing simulation time from months to seconds."

In practical terms, his system acts like a "speed-check" for scientific computing: Instead of running full, time-consuming tests, researchers could quickly predict how their programs will perform and automatically identify faster, more efficient ways to run them. With AI systems now capable of rewriting code and suggesting improvements, Zhou's framework could help scientists optimize their work in minutes rather than weeks.

Zhou is the sole George Mason investigator on the project but will hire postdoctoral researchers as the work advances. Through the Genesis Mission's shared platform, George Mason students will gain access to industrial partners such as AWS, OpenAI, and Google, along with AI tokens and cloud computing resources that support hands-on research. He is also collaborating with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

As Phase I progresses, Zhou aims to show that his approach works across different scientific applications and hardware systems, delivers significantly faster performance, and does so without requiring long simulation runs. Strong results would position his team for Phase II funding, which the DOE expects to award next year.

For Zhou, the Genesis Award marks an important milestone. "It's a recognition of my past contributions to strengthening U.S. scientific discovery," he said. "It also motivates me to continue collaborating with national labs and advancing this domain." The project aligns closely with his long-term goal of making advanced computing systems easier to program while maintaining high efficiency.

"The Genesis Mission rests on a clear premise: AI is becoming an instrument of science, not only an object of it. Professor Zhou's framework is a clear case, a model that predicts and optimizes the systems on which discovery now depends, compressing months of tuning into seconds," said Amarda Shehu, George Mason's vice president and chief AI officer. "George Mason's AI strategy is aimed precisely at this layer, the capability that makes every other field move faster."

Andre Marshall, George Mason's vice president for research, innovation, and economic impact, said this award underscores the university's growing role in advancing the nation's scientific and technological capabilities. "Professor Zhou's project elevates our visibility in the federal research ecosystem and demonstrates how George Mason is contributing to the next generation of AI-driven discovery."

Zhou hopes the project will serve as a catalyst for future partnerships and position George Mason as a leading contributor to the next generation of AI infrastructure-advancing both national scientific priorities and the university's growing research impact.