Complex Chemical Systems Platform Exploring Inorganic Intelligence

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.

The digitization of chemistry has a trillion-dollar potential as a disruptive technology (remote drug manufacture), to develop a chemical data driven economy (chemistry on the cloud), as well as networked chemical synthesis (distributed chemical infrastructure). This application bridges many of the EPSRC outcome frameworks e.g. resilience and productivity (chemical manufacturing based upon digital code and decentralised), connected (chemical code will be on the cloud and aid collaborative developments in digital space), and healthy (algorithms to power a serendipity engine for the discovery of new drug molecules).

We will disseminate our work as widely as possible through publication in high impact journals. We will aim to publish in open access journals or have our publications on the open-archive within 3 months of publication (aiming for 1 month). We will also build web resources for wide dissemination of data (open data), and have a digital platforms website established to help translate affordable robotic systems for use by chemists between labs. We will also ensure that our open / collaborative agenda will be advertised through the large number of invited talks given by the team both in the UK and abroad, including major national and international conferences. We intend to interact directly with the Glasgow University Impact Agenda (GUIA) (including EPSRC-funded Impact Acceleration Accounts) as well as the Cronin-group Glasgow University Research and Enterprise Officer (Melville Anderson). These existing resources will provide support with strategic management of IP. The University of Glasgow prides itself of being the instigator of an innovative, award-winning model for the management of IP known as Easy-Access IP. This represents the University's commitment to maximize the impact from research by adopting a flexible approach to interactions with industry. The GUIA is a key element that we will exploit to give this work visibility, interact with end-users, and develop a forum of interested parties that will receive information and progress updates about the project as it proceeds. Both Scottish Enterprise and the IP Group (technology investors who have a partnership with Glasgow University) have been interacting with us and have been evaluating the overall portfolio with a view to developing a range of investments in order to develop exploitable technology, know-how, and product innovations.

Also, engagement with the companies will allow us to write a road-map developing the platform beyond inorganics to organic synthesis (championed by GSK) and reactionware (championed by MilliPoreSignma). SpacePharma is interested in developing flight-ready miniature chemical synthesis laboratories for drug synthesis in low earth orbit. We will allow the companies to 'embed' researchers in the team and with the platform for collaborative visits / projects as well as encouraging some of our team to second to industrial sites for training and knowledge exchange.