Building Access to Tomorrow’s Medicines: bringing together humans, robots, and artificial intelligence - A Workshop

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will host a workshop exploring the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in chemical sciences and drug discovery. Sponsored by the Chemical Sciences Roundtable, this event will bring together researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders to examine how AI tools can address data biases and democratize pharmaceutical research, potentially reducing drug development costs down from billions of dollars and decades of work. The workshop will discuss AI's role in expanding research capacity, particularly for rare diseases, while exploring critical challenges such as preventing healthcare disparities and ensuring access to advanced technological resources. Panel discussions and a foresight exercise will feature thought leaders examining the integration of AI, laboratory automation, and robotics to advance the chemical sciences' role in traditional drug discovery. 

Workshop Session Panels:

1. Drug Discovery: "The Future is Now"  |  This panel will focus on how advanced tools like AI/ML, robotics, and automation are transforming the chemical laboratories to efficiently progress the drug discovery process.
2. Expanding Access: "Removing the Biases from Drug Discovery" | Discussions will shift to emphasize how investments into the advanced tools used in and the data generated from the drug discovery process contributes collectively to the affordability and availabilty of patient care across a broad spectrum of diseases.
3. Foresight Activity: "Imagining the Future" (interactive breakout sessions) | Breakout groups plan to have independent discussions on how enhanced efficiency of the drug discovery process can produce potentially meaningful results for the future of practicing medicine that will be later compiled for the workshop and the proceedings-in-brief.
4. Building the Community: "Out of the Box Success Stories" | Closing this exciting meeting, we will explore on how collaboration between citizen scientists and other relevant groups can contribute to shared responsibilities, open communication, and access to advanced technological resources to maximize innovations in the drug discovery process that facilitate the highest delivery of patient care.

Confirmed Workshop Panelists:

• Alexandra Snyder Charen, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D, Generate Biomedicines
• David Hamon, International Affairs Specialist/ Policy, Strategy & Communications Team Lead, Sawdey Solutions Services
• Emily Kramer-Golinkoff, Co-Founder, Emily's Entourage
• James Li, President, GondolaBio
• Jesse Kilpatrick, Co-Director of the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center, George Mason University
• Lynda Chin, Founder, President and CEO, Apricty Health
• Margaret Honey, President & CEO, Scratch Foundation
• Nick Davis, Managing Partner, Changer 
• Nicolò Fusi, General Manager, Microsoft Research
• Sanmi Koyejo, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University