Senior Staff Scientist (AI for Self-Driving Labs)

University of Toronto•Toronto, ON

37d

About The Position

The Acceleration Consortium (AC) at the University of Toronto (U of T) is leading a transformative shift in scientific discovery that will accelerate technology development and commercialization. The AC is a global community of academia, industry, and government that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, materials sciences, and high-throughput chemistry to create self-driving laboratories (SDLs), also called materials acceleration platforms (MAPs). These autonomous labs rapidly design materials and molecules needed for a sustainable, healthy, and resilient future, with applications ranging from renewable energy and consumer electronics to drugs. AC Senior Staff Scientists will advance the field of AI-driven autonomous discovery and develop the materials and molecules required to address society's largest challenges, such as climate change, water pollution, and future pandemics. The Acceleration Consortium (AC) promotes inclusive research environment and supports the EDI priorities of the unit. The Acceleration Consortium received a $200M Canadian First Research Excellence Grant for seven years to develop self-driving labs for chemistry and materials, the largest ever grant to a Canadian University. This grant will provide the Acceleration Consortium with seven years of funding to execute its vision. The AC is developing seven advanced SDLs. These include: SDL0 - A central AI and Automation lab to support all the SDLs SDL1 - Inorganic solid-state compounds for advanced materials and energy SDL2 - Organic small molecules for sustainability and health SDL3 - Medicinal chemistry for improving small molecule drug candidates SDL4 - Polymers for materials science and biological applications SDL5 - Formulations for pharmaceuticals, consumer products, and coatings SDL6 - Biocompatibility with organoids / organ-on-a-chip SDL7 - Synthetic scale-up of materials and molecules (University of British Colombia partner lab) This posted position is for a Staff Scientist within SDL0: AI & Automation Expertise in one or more of the following areas is desired: Agentic and sequential decision-making for autonomous experimentation, including active learning and optimal experimental design Generative and probabilistic modeling, including uncertainty estimation, risk-aware prediction, and data-efficient learning Continual, transfer, and meta-learning, with emphasis on sim-to-real and real-to-sim generalization Applied machine learning on real-world experimental or industrial data, including multivariate time-series and noisy, sparse, or incomplete datasets Close collaboration with experimental scientists, translating scientific objectives into ML-driven or autonomous systems The Senior Staff Scientists will work with a diverse team of leading experts at U of T, including Faculty and Staff Scientists such as: Professors Anatole von Lilienfeld, Kourosh Darvish, Florian Shkurti, Animesh Garg, Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Chris Sutton, Oleksandr Voznyy, and more. The Senior Staff Scientists involved in the AC are highly skilled and experienced researchers who will work independently to develop the AI and automation technologies required to build robust and scalable self-driving labs, manage these SDLs, and design and implement research programs (based on thedirection of the AC’s scientific leadership team) that leverage the SDL platforms to discover materials and molecules. Moreover, the Senior Staff Scientists will work collectively, sharing knowledge among each other, faculty, and trainees. This role will report to the Academic Director and Executive Director of the Acceleration Consortium.

Requirements

Ph.D. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Materials Science, Biology, or equivalent
Over 10 years of experience (inclusive of PhD and/or post-graduate work) in research and development, preferably with significant experience in AI for self-driving labs
Experience in AI for Science
Experience working closely with a Principal Investigator or as a Principal Investigator or as Project Director with responsibilities of managing, developing and executing a major research project in the area of AI and automation, including AI utilization in experimental planning, and workflow establishment for seamless integration of experiments and simulations.
Strong experience and expert knowledge of AI and automation
Experience with the development of self-driving laboratories and overseeing the activities of a lab
Experience working with industry partners and on industry led research and development projects
Strong experience presenting research at academic conferences
Experience managing research staff
Experience managing a laboratory budget and procuring equipment
Must have a strong scholarly publication record
Strong and effective communicator in oral and written English
Collegial in working with team members and collaborators
Ability to work independently
Demonstrated success in the writing and preparation of manuscripts, presentations, reports, briefs, and scientific abstracts and manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals.

Responsibilities

Working with the AC community, including faculty and partners to determine the required capabilities of the SDLs to be built.
Developing the plans for SDLs that will meet user requirements and designing novel instruments for automated material synthesis and characterization.
Developing customized hardware and Python software packages to build SDLs.
Selection, procurement, and installation of the equipment required for SDLs.
Working with the department of Chemistry, Facilities and Operations, and AC research staff to ensure that the AC labs are fully operational.
Overseeing the activity of the laboratory technicians servicing the labs
Supporting the selection, procurement, and installation of equipment
Managing laboratory budgets
Scheduling and coordinating lab access
Working as a co-investigator, in partnership with the Principal Investigator, independent management, development, and execution of research programs that leverage the AC’s SDLs and supports the research objectives of AC faculty and industry partners.
Using SDLs to synthesize and characterize large quantities of candidate molecules, calibrating theoretical models with experimental data, predicting promising candidates with computational tools and machine learning algorithms, and elucidating structure-property relationships of emerging molecules, polymers, solid-state materials, formulations, etc.
Managing the research and development projects of AC’s industry partners when implemented in AC labs.
Developing plans that support research collaborations and planning and estimating financial resources required for programs and/or projects.
Supervising the work of Staff Scientists, Software Engineers, Research Associates, and Post-doctoral Fellows
Working with Product Managers to ensure research outcomes meet partner requirements.
Monitoring and reporting on relevant research activity to the Academic Director and Executive Director.
Promoting AC’s research capacity, including delivering presentations at conferences.
Collaboration in the preparation and submission of research proposals to granting agencies and progress reporting.
Preparing manuscripts for submission to peer review publications/journals and stewarding them through the process.
Supporting consulting services related to the application of SDLs for materials discovery for the AC’s partners
Supporting research-focused events such as the Annual Symposium