The robotic alchemist | Professor Lee Cronin (University of Glasgow) | SCI

In this talk, Professor Lee Cronin from the University of Glasgow outlines how his group has devised a universal approach to chemical synthesis and discovery using a chemical processing unit (ChemPU) to build robotic systems, driven by chemical intelligence algorithms, designed to search for new reactivity, reactions, and molecules.

To achieve this, they built a programmable robotic discovery system that can run the reactions and analysis. To programme the robot, they exploit the world’s first domain-specific chemical programming language (XDL) to produce the code. This system will handle the programming of robots so expert chemists can focus on generating discovery experiments, allowing the exploration of chemical space.

Leroy (Lee) Cronin is the Regius Professor of Chemistry in Glasgow. Since the age of nine, Lee wanted to explore chemistry using electronics to control matter. His research spans many disciplines and has four main aims: the construction of an artificial life form; the digitisation of chemistry; the use of artificial intelligence in chemistry including the construction of ‘wet’ chemical computers; and the exploration of complexity and information in chemistry. His group is organised and assembled transparently around ideas, avoids hierarchy, and aims to mentor researchers using a problem-based approach. Nothing is impossible until it is tried.

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