Georg Hoffstaetter de Torquat, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, is leading a $2.9 million Department of Energy grant project to support a bold venture: teaching artificial intelligence (AI) to operate particle accelerators, some of the most complex scientific machines on Earth. 

Credit: Kevin Coughlin, Brookhaven National Lab/CC license 2.0

Based at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on Long Island, the project will train AI systems on computer model “digital twins” of two hitherto human-run accelerators, BNL’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and its planned successor, the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC).

“AI already helps scientists sift through enormous datasets after experiments are done. This project moves AI into an earlier, more active role: deciding how the experiment is run in the first place, in real time,” Hoffstaetter said. “This research is a step toward a future in which the world’s most complicated scientific instruments, like particle accelerators, telescopes, or fusion experiments are routinely operated by AI co-pilots or even AI pilots.” 

Hoffstaetter said this project may be an early move toward a world in which AI can start to test its own physics “ideas.”

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.