Andy Cooper: Materials discovery and innovation | Digital futures

Professor Andy Cooper, from the University of Liverpool, explains that by using robotics and automation, scientists can now do some materials synthesis experiments a thousand times faster than an individual person can, allowing the scientific community to be more ambitious in the challenges we take on.

Find out more about the Cooper Group and the Materials Innovation factory at:

Digital Futures
Recent advances in AI, robotics, data analysis, modelling and simulation have allowed scientists to augment their research to advance discovery more quickly, with many of these techniques being exploited to accelerate research into coronavirus treatments, reducing the time it takes to do some tasks in labs from weeks or months to just hours and identifying patterns and possibilities that humans alone would not see.

The Royal Society of Chemistry's Digital Futures report looks at how the new wave of technologies can turbocharge research speeds to respond to future global challenges and crises – with chemists, biologists, data scientists, public health and environment experts, clinicians, regulators, industry, governments, funders, and philanthropists all part of the solution.

Read our Digital Futures report here:

In this video, hear from:
Professor Andy Cooper
Dr Brandon Harris