Automating Chemical Laboratories
Date
The next meeting in this series will be April 3 – 6, 2025.
Location
Westward Look Resort, Tucson, Arizona
Lead Program Director
Administrative Contact
Sponsors
The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation
Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation
Research Corporation for Science Advancement
Theme
Major advances in automated instrumentation and artificial intelligence (AI) are creating enhanced opportunities for innovation in basic research. Integrating automation and AI into chemical and biological laboratories could have profound impacts by broadening access within the chemical enterprise, optimizing results, improving safety and reproducibility of experiments, enabling people from across the world to conduct experiments they could not do at their own institutions, and increasing the time scientists dedicate to analyzing and understanding research outputs while reducing time spent on rote tasks. When deployed at scale, automation could lower many barriers in the field of synthetic chemistry. With full tele-synthesis and analysis available, ideas for novel synthetic targets could be taken from conceptualization to execution rapidly and efficiently. This Scialog series will bring together about 50 early career scientists from distinct fields including all areas of synthetic chemistry (organic, inorganic, materials and biological), integrated and automated instrument development, engineering, materials science, computer and data science, and AI computer research. The goal is to create a dynamic, interdisciplinary community that will accelerate progress in the chemical sciences and laboratory automation through collaborative projects marrying advances in automation and AI to key questions in fundamental research. The group is also expected to have additional discussions on how the chemistry curriculum and workforce development must adapt to the changes in how basic chemistry research is conducted.
Facilitators
Approximately 10 senior scientists will serve as Facilitators to frame the large questions under consideration, guide discussions, and evaluate proposals.
Fellows
Approximately 50 early career faculty will be invited to participate as Fellows, with early career spanning the time from the first year on the faculty through recently post-tenure.
- To nominate yourself: Submit a Scialog Fellow Application here. Log in or create a new account, then go to My Applications and start a New Application. Use the “Scialog Fellow Application – 2025” application.
- To nominate another early career scientist: Contact the program director or ask your colleague to self-nominate using the steps above.
