Automation is a growing phenomenon within

many areas of scientific development

especially within the area of research

and development of new medicines.

Diseases like malaria and other tropical diseases infect millions

of people across the world annually. The pharmaceutical industry

is constantly striving to create new drugs to combat

and treat these diseases because of the research timescales

and costs involved it’s an increasingly difficult challenge and

therefore improving the speed of the drug

recovery process is of paramount importance.

At The University of Manchester, a team of scientists has

developed EVE, a scientist robot.

EVE uses Artificial Intelligence to identify, sort and separate the

compounds which can then help researchers narrow down new drug candidates faster.

Artificial intelligence that robots like EVE possess ensures that

the speed at which they can process formulae and combinations is

much faster than the speed at which a human brain can function.

Also, EVE and similar robot scientists are not prone to fatigue like

human scientific brains. The early-stage of drug design has been automated

and EVE’s robotic system can screen more than ten

thousand compounds in a day, every day.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge think that the subsequent

versions of EVE can not only discover, but also synthesise new drug compounds.

Robot scientists like EVE have now made it possible to believe that robotic

scientists can not only conduct experiments, but also study the results,

analyse them and explain the research findings at greater speeds and

accuracy as compared to human brains, thus providing a much needed

boost to hypothesis-led automated research.