Baruch professor to lead DOE-funded AI project probing early-universe particle data
Baruch College professor Stefan Bathe has been selected to lead a nine-month U.S. Department of Energy-funded research project developing artificial-intelligence tools to analyze data from high-energy particle collisions.
The project is scheduled to begin Aug. 1, 2026. Bathe will serve as lead principal investigator, working with researchers from Baruch College, Columbia University, the University of Colorado Boulder and Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Analyzing detector data differently
The team plans to build AI systems that learn from raw images produced by particle detectors, rather than relying only on features selected in advance for analysis. The work is intended to identify patterns that may be hidden in high-energy collision data.
Particle-collision experiments generate measurements used to study fundamental matter and forces, including conditions connected to the early universe after the Big Bang. In this project, the announced milestone is the research award and planned development work—not a particle-physics discovery or a demonstrated new AI result.
The Department of Energy is funding the effort through its Genesis Mission selection process, according to Baruch College’s announcement. The announcement said 278 projects were selected from more than 5,000 proposals, or about 5% of submissions.
New York research collaboration
The collaboration connects a New York City-based public college with Columbia and Brookhaven, as well as the University of Colorado Boulder. Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island is a major U.S. research center for nuclear and particle physics.
For Bathe’s team, the immediate work will be developing and testing methods for interpreting detector images. The announcement does not state the dollar value of the individual award, and it does not provide expected technical performance measures or predicted scientific findings.
That distinction matters because AI tools can assist with sorting and analyzing large, complex experimental datasets, but the project has not yet reported that it has identified a previously unknown physical signal. Its results will depend on the work conducted over the nine-month project period.
Potential future use remains prospective
Baruch’s announcement said the research may inform future work at CERN and at the planned Electron-Ion Collider at Brookhaven. Those possible applications are prospective; they are not deployments or findings from the new project.
The Electron-Ion Collider is planned for Brookhaven and is expected to support studies of the building blocks of matter. The newly funded project could help researchers explore ways to handle relevant detector data, but the announcement does not say that its systems will be used at either facility.
Sources
- Baruch Professor Leads DOE-Funded AI Research Project Exploring the Origins of the Universe, Baruch College, City University of New York
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