Workshop: Foundation for Unmanned Technological Utilization, Research, and Exploration (FUTURE) Labs

在能源、可持续发展和医疗保健等领域影响社会的全球挑战的需求需要加快发现的步伐，特别是在发现新分子和材料以及将其转化为绿色能源和可持续增长应用方面。这种迫切的需求引发了自动驾驶实验室领域的显著创新，自动化实验技术、数据科学和人工智能方法的快速发展，有效地探索了可能的实验的广阔空间，并加快了实验室科学的发展。无人技术利用、研究和探索基金会（FUTURE）实验室研讨会将在位于北卡罗来纳州罗利的北卡罗来纳州州立大学举行，将探讨自动驾驶实验室（SDL）的出现--它已经使用机器人技术、实验室自动化和人工智能彻底改变了实验科学。为期两天的研讨会将重点关注自动驾驶实验室的未来发展方向，并探讨建立“通用SDL测试床”作为下一代研究和教育基础设施基石的愿景。该研讨会将汇集一个多元化，多学科的学术和工业研究人员，包括来自化学和生物分子工程，材料科学，计算机科学，生物化学，机器人技术，可持续发展科学，教育，伦理学和数据科学，探索SDLs如何帮助将物理和生命科学中的材料和分子发现加速100到1000倍。研讨会将强调早期职业教师的参与，他们将有机会通过海报会议展示他们在SDL和SDL相关领域的工作。将广泛传播有关会议的信息，以确保广泛和多样化的科学和工业界受众参与。项目/讲习班指导委员会将包括学术界和工业界的研究人员。研讨会的一个主要目标是探讨SDL方法在工业中的使用和采用，它可以对工业生产力产生巨大影响。讲习班将确保SDL的开发者/建造者以及SDL的用户参加。与会者之间的研讨会前会议将为研讨会上讨论的愿景、路线图和主题奠定基础。研讨会的第一天将举行闪电会谈，讨论与SDL至关重要的各种技术领域有关的问题，以及海报会议。第二天将重点关注如何将前一天的想法和见解转化为具体的可操作项目，以影响使用SDL的基础和转化研究。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响评审标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The demands of global challenges impacting society in areas such as energy, sustainability, and healthcare require an accelerated pace of discovery, especially in discovery of new molecules and materials and the translation of these into green energy and sustainable growth applications. This pressing demand has sparked remarkable innovation in the area of Self-Driving Laboratories, with rapid growth in automated experimentation techniques and data science and AI methods to efficiently explore the vast space of possible experiments and speed up laboratory science. The Foundation for Unmanned Technological Utilization, Research, and Exploration (FUTURE) Labs workshop to be held at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina will explore the emergence of self-driving labs (SDLs)—which is already revolutionizing experimental science using robotics, lab automation, and AI. This two-day workshop will focus on charting a future path for self-driving labs and explore a vision for establishing 'Universal SDL Testbeds' as the cornerstone of next-generation research and educational infrastructure. The workshop will bring together a diverse, multidisciplinary group of academic and industrial researchers, including those from chemical and biomolecular engineering, materials science, computer science, biochemistry, robotics, sustainability science, education, ethics, and data science, to explore how SDLs can help accelerate materials and molecular discovery in the physical and life sciences by 100 to 1000 times.The workshop will emphasize participation by early-career faculty who will have an opportunity to showcase their work in SDLs, and SDL-related areas, via a poster session. Information about the meeting will be broadly disseminated to ensure participation by a a wide and diverse scientific and industry audience. The project/workshop steering committee will include researchers from academia as well as industry. A key objective of the workshop is to explore use and adoption of the SDL approach in industry, where it can have enormous impact on industrial productivity. The workshop will ensure participation by developers/builders of SDL’s as well as by users of SDLs. Pre-workshop meetings among participants will lay the groundwork for the vision, roadmap, and topics to be discussed at the workshop. The first day of the workshop will feature lightning talks, discussions related to the various technical areas that are critical to SDLs, and the poster session. The second day will focus on how the ideas and insights from the previous day can be translated into specific actionable items for impact on foundational as well as translational research using SDLs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.