According to a recent press release, “Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced $15 million in funding for 23 projects to accelerate the incorporation of machine learning and artificial intelligence into the energy technology and product design processes as part of the Design Intelligence Fostering Formidable Energy Reduction (and) Enabling Novel Totally Impactful Advanced Technology Enhancements (DIFFERENTIATE) program. Launched in April of this year, the DIFFERENTIATE program aims to develop streamlined solutions to next-generation energy challenges. The program identified three general mathematical optimization problems that are common to many design processes. The selected projects then conceptualized machine learning and artificial intelligence-based solutions to help engineers execute and solve these problems in a manner that dramatically accelerates the pace of energy innovation.”

The release goes on, “Following the initial round of Phase I funding for the DIFFERENTIATE program, additional funding will be available to qualifying awardees at a future date… DIFFERENTIATE projects include: Iowa State University – Ames, Iowa. Context-Aware Learning for Inverse Design in Photovoltaics – $607,138. Iowa State University will develop machine learning tools to accelerate the inverse design of new microstructures in photovoltaics. The team will create a new deep generative model to combat challenges in real-world inverse design problems. The proposed inverse design tools, if successful, will produce novel, manufacturable material microstructures with improved electromagnetic properties relative to existing technology.”

Read more at energy.gov.

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