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A ����ֱ�� State University researcher has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for an inaugural Genesis Mission award to develop an artificial intelligence framework capable of locating critical minerals using 50 years of the nation’s water-quality records.

David Costello, Ph.D., professor in ����ֱ�� State’s Department of Biological Sciences, is the principal investigator on “AI-Driven Probabilistic Source Mapping for Critical Minerals at Continental Scale.” The project is one of 278 selected by the DOE to accelerate AI-driven scientific discovery. More than 5,000 applications were submitted, the largest number of applicants to any award mechanism in DOE history. Costello’s project is one of only four projects led by an Ohio institution selected for the Genesis Mission, and the only one from northern Ohio.

The nine-month Phase I project will mine an existing archive of water-chemistry samples – collected by state, federal and local agencies since the early days of the Clean Water Act – for chemical signatures indicating the presence of copper, cobalt and manganese, minerals critical to batteries, solar panels and advanced manufacturing that the United States currently imports at scale.

“We already have millions of records of trace elements in surface water, and that can be a signal of where we could find these materials on the landscape,” Costello said.

Costello leads a ����ֱ�� State team that includes a postdoctoral researcher and a research scientist, working alongside Dustin Kincaid, Ph.D., of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Upper Midwest Water Science Center; Michelle Newcomer, Ph.D., of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and mathematician Angela Peace, Ph.D., of Virginia Tech. The project builds on a USGS-funded research collaboration Costello has been part of for several years. 

Machine-learning models are suited to the challenge, Costello said, because they can extract a consistent geologic signal from a dataset spanning hundreds of thousands to millions of samples collected under widely varying seasonal and flow conditions.

We cannot ask the streams to fast before we take their sample,” Costello said, comparing the inconsistency in the data to a blood panel thrown off by an unfasted patient. “People are going out and sampling at different times of day and during different periods of dryness or wetness. That’s something we have to figure out, without being able to control for it.

Deliverables for Phase I include a harmonized national dataset, continental-scale prediction layers, models of how biological processes modify the water-chemistry signal and an initial prospectivity tool designed to plug into DOE’s data platforms. Costello’s team is also required to identify potential industry partners within the nine-month period. A successful Phase I could position the team to pursue a larger, multiyear follow-on award to expand the approach to additional elements.

The Genesis Mission is a historic national initiative led by DOE, which is building the world’s most powerful integrated science discovery platform. By uniting government, industry, academia and philanthropy, it is accelerating breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery and national security through a new platform that combines AI, supercomputing, quantum systems and advanced scientific instruments. The award reflects ����ֱ�� State’s standing as an R1 (very high research) institution, the highest classification for doctoral research universities. ����ֱ�� State holds the distinction of being one of only seven institutions in Ohio to be recognized as an R1 top-tier research university by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

The goal of the Phase I RFA awards is to identify promising pathways toward transformative scientific capabilities and establish a foundation for future investment and scale. Project teams will design and demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation while rigorously evaluating whether those approaches can accelerate discovery, improve predictive capabilities, enhance experimentation or generate new scientific insights. 

Find more information about ����ֱ�� State’s Department of Biological Sciences.