This Government Agency Is A Surprising Powerhouse In AI

Among the many departments and agencies within the United States federal government, the US Department of Energy (DOE) stands out as one of the most science, technology, and innovation-focused. This should come as little surprise to those who know the DOE's storied history with its breakthrough labs, world-leading research institutions, and highly educated staff. Since World War II, the DOE has been at the forefront of most of the groundbreaking and world-changing revolutions in science and technology including the development and harnessing of nuclear energy, innovations in genomics including the DOE initiative Human Genome Project, work in high-performance computing, and many other research-oriented efforts. In fact, the DOE supports more research in the physical sciences than any other US federal agency, providing more than 40% of US funding in computing, physics, chemistry, materials science, and other area through a system of national laboratories including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Ames Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Labs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and dozens more institutions. Until very recently, the DOE also ran the world's top two fastest supercomputers: Summit and Sierra.