Irvine, California, June 9, 2025 – The UC Presidential Office funds a $6 million three-year initiative led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, to address the epic challenges of geophysics embedded in the Earth's crust using artificial intelligence tools.
Geophysicist. The AI project aims to harness sustainable geothermal energy to sequester carbon dioxide underground and stimulate progress in providing safe, long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel, among other targets.
“Trading away the Earth's abundant yet difficult-to-reach geothermal energy and better understanding and potentially predicting induced underground capabilities, as well as other underground capabilities, will take new technology and new approaches: Environmental Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering.
“We intend to design geophysicists using attributes from skilled geophysicists, including the ability to integrate and analyze heterogeneous data and models.
With UC Irvine researchers taking the lead, the project will leverage the expertise of private and environmental engineers, geoscientists, mathematicians and computer scientists at UC campuses in Riverside, San Diego, Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory will also be participating.
“Our goal is to transform geophysicists' ability to solve the most challenging underground challenges by developing a scalable artificial intelligence ecosystem that integrates large-scale language and physics-based models with vast amounts of real-world data.” “We also believe that geophysicists need to adopt new methods, making both the project and its results more widely useful in scientific applications beyond geophysics.”
Detweiler of Irvine, California, is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and as a co-investigator, said he is using Geophysicist.ai to envision a team. Addressing two major epic challenges of geoengineering. The first is to help humanity take advantage of the enhanced geothermal system. This involves liquid circulating through a low permeable rock 2.5 miles deep to extract heat and drive the turbine. Detwiler said the effort is supported by AI and machine learning — is complicated due to the interaction of thermal, mechanical and chemical processes at multiple scales.
The second goal is to use AI and machine learning to help predict seismic activity induced from engineering tracking beneath the Earth's surface. Researchers believe this complexity problem is a good match for AI, as it involves the continuous generation of terabytes of seismic data.
The main source of data is the Sanford Metro Research Facility in South Dakota. Geophysicist scientists will access this resource in collaboration with the Center's counterparts to understand underground signals and transparency, in order to understand the permeability of the U.S. Energy Agency, which is managed through the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Additionally, the team will utilize the Department of Energy's multiphysics simulator running on the DOE supercomputer. UC Irvine also has significant high-performance computing capabilities that benefit the project and interdisciplinary AI expertise, Mjolsness said.
“In collaboration with the lead researchers here at UC Irvine, other UC campus scientists and national lab collaborators can generate sufficient preliminary proof-of-concept results, publish them as teams, and publish them as teams. [promote] Qomi said “a full-fledged research center-like synergy” and “our work in the coming years should be in a good position to compete for future federal funding.”
About UC Irvine's amazing future campaign: The incredible Future Campaign, released on October 4th, 2019, aims to raise awareness and support for UC Irvine. By attracting 75,000 alumni and garnering a $2 billion charity investment, UC Irvine aims to reach new heights of excellence in student success, health and health, research and more. The Samuelli School of Engineering plays a key role in the success of the campaign. For more information, see https://brilliantfuture.uci.edu/the-henry-samueli-school-of-engineering.
About UC Irvine: Founded in 1965, Irvine, California is a member of the prestigious American Colleges Association and is ranked among the top 10 public universities in the country. US News & World Report. The campus produces five Nobel Prize winners and is known for its academic achievements, premier research, innovation and anti-theater mascots. Headed by California Premier Irvine, Premier Howard Gilman has over 36,000 students and offers a 224-degree program. Located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities, it is Orange County's second-largest employer, donating $7 billion a year to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more information about UC Irvine, please visit www.uci.edu.
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