The National Nuclear Security Administration has announced a new Focused Investigatory Center at Michigan State University focused on the future of fusion energy.

The award includes $5 million spread out over the next five years and will provide a unique opportunity for MSU faculty and students to work alongside and learn from U.S. Department of Energy researchers in collaboration with researchers from Georgia Tech and Brown University.

“The creation of this center really speaks to the bleeding-edge research happening at MSU,” said Andrew Christlieb, an MSU Research Foundation Distinguished Professor in the colleges of Engineering and Natural Science. “It’s about creating a mini collaborative research environment where students and postdoctoral students are conducting basic research and cutting-edge science while gaining national laboratory experience to solve an important problem that is significant to the DOE.”

MSU’s center, called the Center for High Order Plasma Turbulence Modeling for Z-Pinch, will build on research expertise in data science and scientific computing using artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop better predictive models to create fusion energy. These models will test atoms that haven’t been used before in a device called a Z-pinch to create fusion energy.