Democratizing Synthesis

We are poised for a transition from the highly customized crafting of specific molecular targets by hand to the increasingly general and automated assembly of many different types of molecules with the push of a button. Creating machines that are capable of making many different types of small molecules on demand, akin to that which has been achieved on the macroscale with 3D printers, is a potentially transformative objective. Such machines will democratize synthesis, thereby empowering specialists and non-specialists alike to discover and develop next generation medicines, agrochemicals, biological probes, and materials. Parallel advances in online reaction monitoring, self-optimization, and machine learning/artificial intelligence stand to powerfully synergize with these evolving automated synthesis platforms. Closing the loop for automated design, synthesis, and testing at the molecular scale will transform automated synthesis into automated functional discovery. Continued progress in these directions has the potential to shift the bottleneck in molecular innovation from synthesis to imagination (human or artificial), and thereby help drive a new industrial revolution on the molecular scale.

Student Hosted: Eric Miller, Walczak lab

Scheduling contact: Kayla Jones