Robot Scientists: Automating Biology and Chemistry

A Robot Scientist is a physically implemented robotic system that applies techniques from artificial intelligence to execute cycles of automated scientific experimentation. A Robot Scientist can automatically execute cycles of: hypothesis formation, selection of efficient experiments to discriminate between hypotheses, execution of experiments using laboratory automation equipment, and analysis of results.  We are interested in developing Robot Scientists for philosophical and technological reasons.  Science is also an excellent test-bed for developing Artificial Intelligence methods.  We developed the first Robot Scientist “Adam” to investigate yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) functional genomics. Adam is the first time a machine has discovered novel scientific knowledge.  More recently we have developed the Robot Scientist “Eve” to automate and integrate drug discovery: drug screening, hit conformation, and QSAR development.  Eve utilises novel synthetic biology screens that combine the advantages of computational, target-based, and cell-based assays.  Our focus has been on neglected tropical disease, and using Eve we have discovered lead compounds for malaria, Chagas, African sleeping sickness, etc

Professor Ross D. King has an international reputation in artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, and chemoinformatics based on >20 years’ experience in these fields. He has published >120 peer-reviewed publications, and has an H index of 38 (Google Scholar). He is perhaps the only computer scientist in the UK with first author papers in Nature and Science.  His research won the British Computer Society, Machine Intelligence Prize, 2007; and he was nominated for the World Technology Award (software) in 2004 and 2006.  He is also one of the few PIs in a Computer Science Department in the World with a “wet lab”.  He has recently moved this lab from Aberystwyth to new space in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester.