Stanford Medicine team gets $20 million for cloud lab standards

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $20 million grant to a collaboration led by Mark Musen, MD, PhD, professor of computational medicine at Stanford Medicine, to support a network of AI-driven, remotely operated laboratories. The grant is part of a $400 million effort to build a national network of 20 programmable cloud laboratories that can run autonomously from instructions sent remotely by scientists and engineers.

The NSF Test Bed: Toward a Network of Programmable Cloud Laboratories is funding groups to test, scale and demonstrate tools for automated hypothesis generation and experimentation. The initiative supports the Genesis Mission, a U.S. government program focused on using AI to promote scientific discovery.

Musen’s team will lead standards work across all 20 NSF-funded groups, focusing on translating protocols written for human technicians into clear instructions machines can execute. The project, called GEMSTONE, aims to create a common language for cloud labs by using natural language analysis to clarify ambiguous directions such as stir thoroughly. Collaborators include Purdue University, Morehouse College and Emerald Cloud Lab, which operates a remote laboratory in Texas.