Emerging Capabilities

Berkeley Lab scientists and engineers are developing new capabilities to revolutionize the way discovery science is performed, and to maintain our ability to deliver valuable research for the nation and world. Our innovations will lead to tomorrow’s breakthroughs in discovery science, clean energy, and a healthy planet.

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New experimental capabilities

Developing new scientific capabilities for future discovery.

Extending our scientific leadership

Facility and capability upgrades that extend our leadership in critical programs.

Modernizing our site infrastructure

Revitalizing our conventional site infrastructure to enable our science mission today and tomorrow.

ALS-U: solving scientific challenges with soft X-rays

ALS-U is an ongoing upgrade of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Berkeley Lab that will endow the ALS with revolutionary X-ray capabilities.

Biological and Environmental Program Integration Center (BioEPIC)

Artistic rendering of the exterior of the BioEPIC facility after construction.

Scientists who will work in BioEPIC seek to revolutionize understanding of how microbes interact with soils and plants to influence the environment.

Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) upgrades

ESnet’s next-generation network, ESnet6, is designed to help the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research community navigate an expected “data deluge” by giving the community more bandwidth, greater flexibility, and faster data transfer capabilities.

Linear Assets Modernization Project (LAMP)

Aerial view of the various underground utility lines marked by red, yellow, and green lines.

LAMP is the largest underground system modernization project in the history of the Lab. Upgrading the Lab’s utility infrastructure will help ensure critical work on cutting edge science and operations can continue safely and uninterrupted.

NERSC-10

Connection cables lined up against the wall.

The NERSC-10 project would deliver a next-generation supercomputer in the 2026 time frame for the DOE Office of Science research community to address an evolving landscape in scientific research: the convergence of simulations and modeling, advances in artificial intelligence, and an explosion of experimental and observational data.

Biological Genome Engineering and Manufacturing Facility (BioGEM)

Three students in the foreground look at notes on a clipboard. The group is standing in a laboratory with other students in the background.

The envisioned BioGEM facility would integrate bioengineering research on microbes and plants from discovery to scale-up for biofuels and bioproducts. This facility would provide state-of-the-art space for training the bioeconomy workforce of the future.

A digital illustration on a black background. On the left of the image a blue and orange 3D atomic structure is displayed flowing into a neural network pattern. The pattern moves into a glowing bridge model structure and ends on the right with various nodes with text extending from each (structure, property, synthesis, stability, band gap, formation energy, magnetic order, prediction). A purple neural network brain and various cubes appear on the right side.

Berkeley Lab researchers developed MatterChat, a versatile AI “bridge model” that translates between specialized physics models and conversational Large Language Models. This provides a powerful new blueprint for integrating complex scientific data directly into LLMs, and was used to accelerate materials discovery by understanding the language of atomic structures.