FYI
From: 'Sarrao, John' via nldc <nldc(a)nationallabs.org>
Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2026 at 3:52 PM
To: 'John C. Wagner' via nldc <nldc(a)nationallabs.org>
Subject: [NLDC] summary of Genesis-NLDC ExCom call 2/4/26
Colleagues,
We had our weekly Genesis-NLDC ExCom call today. As promised, here’s a short summary.
For ExCom, Laura and Stephen were able to join me (and they should feel welcome to correct the below).
Dario, Shawn Whitman, Jeremy Ison, Harriet Kung, and Hal Finkel attended for S-4.
We discussed lighthouses (per the separate email thread) and that the plan is to discuss same at an NSTC meeting next week (including Dario, Commerce, NSF, NIH) with a press release to follow – likely shorter list than we have. And then one or two NOFOs by the end of the month and then six weeks to respond. Project starts in may/June
In building teams to respond to the NOFO, still some uncertainty on ‘how’ – e.g., do teams find their own partners or do they access them through the Consortium – seems like more latter than former, with important details to be worked, including how to leverage/access in-kind resources.
There was a recent event with Google Deep Mind on how they work, including team formulation, ratio of computer science to domain science staffing, access to compute etc. that had a big impact on Dario. Focus seems to be understand scaling laws first and then see if there’s a potential win with AI before actually doing the research. Also, shorter ‘sprint-like’ performance periods. We’ll see how this all plays out, but three years of stable funding is not a likely outcome. Some recognition of the workforce challenges implicit in same.
For the academic convening on 2/18, 300 invites have been sent. Lab invites still tbd. Focus of February will be listening to academia.
Last week’s Japan trip was positive and sounds like they’re on track to announce a partnership and investment with Prime Minister visits in mid-March.
There has been some chatter among labs that some lighthouses are pre-selected. Dario pushed back on that.
We’ll push to continue the dialogue next week and welcome topics/key issues to highlight.
john
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