Ecosystems for Smart Autonomous Interconnected Laboratories (E-SAIL) Workshop

Recent advances in edge computing, automation/autonomy, and artificial intelligence (AI) are leading many institutions to build “smart” autonomous experimental laboratories and user facilities. These institutions integrate complex solutions that automate workflows (i.e., instrument setup and tuning, sample synthesis and processing, measurements, data analysis, and model-driven data interpretation) and make them “smart” by incorporating AI/ML to bring about revolutionary efficiencies and research outcomes. Unfortunately, there has been limited coordination across the various scientific communities to develop a common research infrastructure for autonomous “smart” laboratories and user facilities. This lack of coordination has led to a variety of solutions that often overlap but do not inherently interoperate resulting in stove-piped “smart” labs and user facilities. The primary goal of the E-SAIL workshop is to bring together scientists with diverse expertise to increase collaboration efforts in the development of a common science research ecosystem for current and future “smart” labs and user facilities. We propose to focus on “Ecosystem Advancements and Development” and “Ecosystem Users,” as we see these as two key topics when creating a common ecosystem for the Instrument-to-Edge-to-Cloud-to-HPC scientific continuum.