The Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) awarded the University of Toronto a $200-million grant to support the research its Acceleration Consortium is doing on “self-driving labs” — which is based in part on the concept of self-driving cars.
According to U of T, the research combines artificial intelligence, robotics, and advanced computing in an effort to discover new materials faster and at a fraction of the usual cost.
“Our goal is to accelerate science. To do that, we realized we need to take a cue from self-driving cars and (so we) extended that concept to a self-driving lab, which uses AI and automation to carry out more experiments in a smarter way,” said Acceleration Consortium Director Alán Aspuru-Guzik. “We’ve essentially supercharged the process of scientific discovery.”
Aspuru-Guzik is a professor in the departments of chemistry and computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science at U of T. He is also a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
The Acceleration Consortium is composed of nearly 100 researchers coming from a range of disciplines. It also has 30 partners from the private and public sector, one of which is the University of British Columbia.
“This will help us make the Greater Toronto Area and Canada world leaders in AI-frontier discovery — we have no excuse not to be after this project,” said Aspuru-Guzik. He added that the consortium is a global effort, with its home-base (which involves academia, government and the industry) located in Toronto, Ont.
“A core goal of our efforts is to spin out the next generation of companies that will develop the materials for the 21st century here in Canada. This, in turn, will help make the GTA the economic epicenter for this field,” said Aspuru-Guzik.
