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Professor Meric S. Gertler
President, University of Toronto

invites University of Toronto alumni and friends to attend a reception, featuring a special presentation:

Accelerating Discovery: The Impact of Self-Driving Labs on Sustainable Innovation

by

Dr. Christine Allen
Professor, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy
Scientific Leadership Team Member, Acceleration Consortium
University of Toronto

Join us for a compelling presentation by Dr. Christine Allen about how U of T’s Acceleration Consortium (AC) is addressing grand challenges for a sustainable future through its pioneering work with self-driving labs (SDLs).

From tackling climate change to advancing human health, SDLs are revolutionizing the discovery of better-performing materials. With traditional discovery methods being slow and costly – to the tune of decades and millions of dollars – SDLs leverage materials science, AI, robotics, and high-performance computing to autonomously design and test materials and molecules, dramatically cutting time and costs to market.

Discover how the AC’s global community of academics, industry and government leaders is harnessing the potential of SDLs as an emerging technology to shape a more sustainable future.

About the Speaker

Dr. Christine Allen is a full professor at the University of Toronto and an internationally recognized leader with more than 170 publications in drug formulation and development. She is a member of the Scientific Leadership Team of the Acceleration Consortium, a strategic initiative at U of T awarded $200M in funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. She has received numerous awards, and is a distinguished fellow of prestigious societies including the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Christine is committed to the translation and commercialization of her research. She is a co-founder and CEO of Intrepid Labs Inc., a company that is accelerating pharmaceutical drug development through integration of AI, automation and advanced computing. She is also a co-founder and board member at Nanovista Inc. Her lab at U of T is deeply engaged in industry partnerships, playing a key role in advancing drugs from early-stage research to clinical trials.

Her leadership has been pivotal in several scientific societies, notably as President of the Controlled Release Society and the Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences. In academia, her roles have included the inaugural Associate Vice-President and Vice Provost Strategic Initiatives and Interim Dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.