Complex Chemical Systems Platform Exploring Inorganic Intelligence

我们的愿景是通过定义关键的基础科学问题，并通过培养具备正确技能的研究人员来探索这一新兴的科学领域，建立无机智能的新领域。克罗宁小组在这项研究的基础方面做出了世界领先的贡献，现在我们需要探索，统一和发展一些核心科学问题。这些包括如何使用机器人技术和实时数据探索和控制以及理解复杂的化学系统。我们预计这四个主题的协调发展将带来多种应用，例如纳米分子的自组装控制、化学合成和发现自动化或人工智能（AI）反应优化以及新基础原理的探索和发现。新的赠款将继续统一和发展在上一个平台期间已经建立的协同作用，但最重要的是将确保连续性和稳定性。这将使团队能够从专注于无机系统发展到复杂化学系统的数字控制和探索。新平台不仅有助于统一团队中已有的许多分支，而且还将允许扩展到新学科，包括机器人技术，机器学习以及这些领域之间的协同作用-这些主题很少合并，因此很难使用其他机制筹集资金。因此，新平台对于研究活动的延续和发展至关重要，为整合团队提供了附加值，使我们能够具有战略性，并将团队发展到定义“无机智能”领域的选定新领域。之前的资助有助于我们扩大临界质量，加强现有的关键国际合作，并支持格拉斯哥的组间合作，这使我们能够推测和发展我们在化学机器人方面的探索性工作。此外，我们可以灵活地支持和进一步巩固现有的一些团队，并聘请新的专业知识，以及在EPSRC导师计划的帮助下重组团队。我们需要新的平台来继续我们的团队发展，并提供稳定性和灵活性，这在未来几年尤为重要。和以前一样，我们的目标是将我们的最佳成果发表在《科学》和《自然》杂志上，通过专利申请保护创新，并吸引用户群体和实业家以及其他世界领先的学者，以最大限度地发挥学术和技术影响。这将通过充分利用各种来源的资金来实现，目标是需要利用平台作为整合组成部分来开发的领域。我们还将在平台内启动“泵启动”项目，提供过渡性资金，并准备好利用意想不到的高影响力成果。该平台将确保该小组在关键时刻保持临界质量，并在一系列新领域保持科学前沿。

Our vision is to establish the new field of inorganic intelligence by defining the key fundamental science problems, and by developing researchers equipped with the right skills to explore this emerging area of science. The Cronin Group has made world-leading contributions to foundational aspects of this research and now we need to explore, unify, and develop some of the central science problems. These include how to explore and control, and understand complex chemical systems using robotics and real-time data. We anticipate that the coordinated development of these four topics will lead into applications as diverse as self-assembly control in nano molecules, chemical synthesis and discovery automation or artificial intelligence (AI) optimisation of reactions and exploration and discovery of new underpinning principles. The new grant will continue to unify and develop synergies already established during the previous Platform, but most importantly will ensure continuity and stability. This will enable the team to evolve from focusing on inorganic systems to the digital control and exploration of complex chemical systems. The new Platform will not only contribute to unify the many strands already existing in the team, but will also allow an extension to new disciplines including robotics, machine learning, and development of synergies across those areas - a combination of topics very rarely merged and hence extremely hard to raise funding using other mechanisms. Thus, the new Platform is essential for continuation and the evolution of the research activity, giving added value in integrating the group, allowing us to be strategic and develop the team into the chosen new areas defining the area of 'inorganic intelligence'. The previous grant was instrumental in letting us extend our critical mass, enhance key existing international collaborations, and support inter-group collaborations in Glasgow, which allowed us to speculate and develop our exploratory work in chemical robotics. In addition, we had the flexibility to support and further consolidate some of the existing team, and to hire in new expertise, as well as restructure the team with help from the EPSRC mentor scheme. We need the new platform to continue our team development and provide stability and flexibility especially important during the next few years. As before, we will aim for our best results to be published in Science and Nature, protect innovations by patent applications, and engage a user group and industrialists as well as other world-leading academics to maximise both the academic and technological impact. This will be achieved by making full use of funding from various sources, aiming at areas that need to be developed using the Platform as a consolidating component. We will also seed 'pump-prime' projects within the Platform, provide bridging funding, and be ready to exploit unexpected and high impact results. The Platform will ensure the group remains at critical mass at a critical time, and at the cutting edge of science in a range of new areas.