Through the Predictive Phenomics Initiative, researchers are combining AI, automation, and high-throughput experimentation to accelerate biological discovery. Automated liquid handling platforms generate massive datasets while AI systems design and refine experiments, exploring combinations far beyond what humans could test alone.
By closing the loop between design, build, test, and learn, scientists can optimize cellular factories faster and with greater insight.
Enabled by PNNL’s Foundational Autonomy infrastructure, this work represents a new model for scientific discovery—where AI and automation work alongside scientists to unlock the next generation of biological innovation.
The Autonomy Studio
Inside PNNL’s Autonomy Studio, scientists are building a new model for laboratory research—where AI, robotics, and humans work side by side. Through digital twins, AI agents, and automated liquid-handling systems, researchers are augmenting—not replacing—scientists to accelerate discovery in areas like biological engineering and critical materials separations. This is a shift toward hybrid, AI-enabled science that keeps experiments moving and redefines how research is done.
Materials Innovation Through Robotics and AI Lab (MIRAL)
At PNNL’s Materials Innovation through Robotics and AI Lab (MIRAL), robots handle routine and repetitive small-scale laboratory tasks to improve the researchers’ labor landscape—and productivity. Key to MIRAL is its small-scale capabilities, which allow multiple experiments to run in parallel with robotic support. With robotic capabilities, researchers can perform up to 50 times more experiments than manual methods in practically the same amount of time.
Maritime Autonomous Systems
At PNNL-Sequim, we are creating an environment where cooperative autonomous systems can thrive in the maritime domain. We're starting with an autonomous surface vessel and an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Orchestrated Platform for Autonomous Laboratories (OPAL)
PNNL is accelerating biotechnology through AI-guided autonomous experimentation that will dramatically speed discovery through the work of Orchestrated Platform for Autonomous Laboratories (OPAL), a multilab collaboration with Berkeley Lab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory.
Elias Nakouzi, a PNNL materials scientist, talks about building a semi-autonomous workflow for critical materials recovery from industrial waste. (Video by Eddie Pablo | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)