This content was published on April 28, 2023 – 14:50
Toronto (Canada), Apr 28 (EFE).- Canada announced this Friday that it will allocate 146 million US dollars to develop revolutionary autonomous laboratories controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), which speed up and make the production of new materials and molecules cheaper, a project directed by the scientist of Mexican origin Alán Aspuru Guzik.
The Canadian Minister of Innovation and Science, Francois-Philippe Champagne, explained that these funds, the largest federal grant awarded in Canadian history, will go to the Acceleration Consortium (AC) of the University of Toronto.
AC is led by Professor of Chemistry and Computer Science at the University of Toronto, Alán Aspuru Guzik, who has developed the concept of “self-driving” laboratories (SDL), robotic laboratories controlled by intelligence. artificial.
Aspuru Guzik is considered one of the brightest minds in modern chemistry and was recruited by the University of Toronto in 2018 to fill one of the places in the Canada 150 Research Program, created by the Canadian government to “improve Canada’s reputation as a global scientific center.
The Mexican scientist told EFE that the project “has the potential to change science as we know it now.”
“This year has shown us how quickly the impact of artificial intelligence in the world has grown since the launch of popular platforms like ChatGPT. Similarly, robotics is advancing by leaps and bounds,” he said.
“The combination of these two technologies to make discoveries in science is what these ‘driverless’ laboratories whose decisions are streamlined by artificial intelligence systems and executed by robots are all about,” explained the scientist.
Together with humans, “these systems hold promise to accelerate scientific discovery and thereby help us discover new molecules and materials for applications in clean energy, medicine, and other fields,” he added.
According to the University of Toronto, the autonomous laboratories that Aspuru Guzik will develop will speed up the development of new medicines, biodegradable plastics, low-carbon cement or renewable energy, among other projects.
The SDLs are estimated to reduce the time and cost to produce new materials from 20 years and $100 million to one year and $1 million.
Earlier this year, Aspuru Guzik demonstrated the possibilities of his concept by discovering in just one month, thanks to the use of AI, a potential drug to fight liver cancer. Without AI, this type of work typically requires six months to a year.
The Mexican scientist, who before arriving in Toronto was a professor at Harvard University (USA), confessed to EFE the personal importance of the grant granted by Canada to his project.
“This moment is very important because it endorses the very positive decision that emigrating from the country for a second time was for me. First I migrated from Mexico to the US. Then from the US to Canada, where we are doing great things. I feel like the most important science fair of my life,” he said.
The funding from Aspuru Guzik’s Acceleration Consortium is part of a C$1.4 billion (US$1.026 million) investment announced Friday by the Canadian government to support 11 major research initiatives at the country’s universities.
The projects range from clean navigation in the Arctic to the development of gene therapies or the decarbonization of communities. EFE
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2023-04-28 14:57:38
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