Acceleration Consortium: Self-Driving Labs for Molecular and Materials Discovery
Materials and molecules have played a defining role in human history, from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the semiconductors that propelled the Information Age. They are also central to solving many of the world’s most pressing grand challenges, such as climate change, plastics pollution and cancer. Launched in 2021, the Acceleration Consortium at the University of Toronto is leveraging its strength in artificial intelligence and automation to realize the age of materials on demand. Imagine a world in which we can rapidly develop the cost-effective, high-performance materials that are needed the most, such as catalysts for effective atmospheric carbon dioxide capture and use, low-carbon cement, lightweight biodegradable composites, membranes for water filtration and potent molecules for treatment of cancer and future pandemics.
The Acceleration Consortium is a global community revolutionizing materials discovery through the development of self-driving laboratories. While traditional materials innovation is prohibitively slow and expensive, self-driving laboratories combine artificial intelligence, robotics and advanced computing to radically reduce the time and cost of bringing materials to market, from approximately 20 years and approximately $100 million to as little as one year and $1 million. These autonomous labs predict, synthesize and test materials for specific performance characteristics (e.g., conductivity) and then repeat and refine this process, closing the loop on the discovery by integrating these three steps into one automated system.
The Acceleration Consortium includes top researchers from the University of Toronto and partner institution The University of British Columbia, with domestic and global academic, industry and government partners, to develop the world’s leading accelerated discovery centre. This open innovation ecosystem will use self-driving laboratories as a platform technology to facilitate transdisciplinary collaboration, driving research and commercialization that address genuine needs.
Materials innovation is critical for a sustainable, healthy and resilient society. The Acceleration Consortium will focus on three research pillars:
- development of scalable self-driving laboratories technologies;
- molecular and materials applications for resilience; and
- ethics, futures and the economy of the self-driving laboratories revolution, to promote industrial adoption of self-driving laboratories technologies and ensure that all Canadians benefit.
The world is ripe for a materials revolution—led by Canada and the Acceleration Consortium’s renowned experts across disciplines, sectors and geographic locations.