AI's Impact on the Chromatography Community

“Long term, I actually see it as being more of a closed-loop learning system that brings to bear scientific data, AI models, lab experiments, and manufacturing to continuously inform and improve upon each other.”

— Erin Chambers, Global Vice President & General Manager, Consumables & Lab Automation, Waters Corporation

Asked about artificial intelligence's effect on the chromatography community, Erin Chambers, global vice president and general manager of Waters Corporation's consumables and lab automation business, describes a shift already underway among major biopharma innovators, who she says are investing in AI infrastructure, partnerships, and capabilities to accelerate discovery, while MedTech companies apply AI to accelerate operations and improve productivity—activity she says is already happening across the industry and continuing to evolve quickly.

In the near term, Chambers points to three uses already happening today: mining manufacturing and quality-control data for trends and early failure signals, generating new hypotheses by analyzing aggregated data differently than researchers typically interrogate it on their own, and functioning as a general productivity tool many people, including herself, already use day to day for tasks like getting quick answers or drafting presentations. She cites a figure suggesting roughly 40 percent of large customers are focused on using AI to make R&D more productive as costs rise. Longer term, she describes a potential shift toward what she calls a closed-loop learning system, linking scientific data, AI models, lab experiments, and manufacturing so they continuously inform and improve one another, making connections across an aggregate of data that she says the human brain can't easily make on its own. That longer-term outcome, she notes, depends on one prerequisite that doesn't yet widely exist: a common, reliable data system, which she says could ultimately make or break how far this kind of AI-driven advancement is able to go.

Chambers answered the following question:

• What is your take on artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will affect the chromatography community in the short- and long-term?

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