Accelerating Scientific Discovery

Can we cure cancer before it starts? Double the efficiency of solar panels? Discover new drugs 10 times faster? The answers to extremely complex questions like these could be found where advanced scientific research, computation, robotics, machine learning and data analytics meet.

The new Carnegie Mellon University Cloud Lab harnesses the possibilities of automated science and accelerates the potential impact of the research being done at CMU. This facility, the first cloud lab on an academic campus in the world, will make scientific experimentation more accessible and transparent, faster and less prone to error.

Later this year, experiments will begin in the CMU Cloud Lab, which is a shared, central facility with 200 commercial chemical and life sciences instruments. The CMU Cloud Lab gives researchers the ability to orchestrate complex workflows and run multiple experiments simultaneously. Samples and operations are barcoded and scanned, making all work traceable and reproducible at the touch of a button. Results are typically returned within a day. That means less focus on the repetitive “manual labor” of scientific experimentation and more time spent on thoughtful conclusions.

Part of CMU’s future of science initiative, the CMU Cloud Lab is giving faculty and student researchers the tools, resources and time to both ask the right questions and design the experiments that will lead to incredible advancements.