Synopsis

The Materials Innovation Factory (MIF) at the University of Liverpool is a £100M world-leading centre for accelerating materials discovery via the seamless integration of computation, chemistry automation, data analysis, and world-class expertise. A strategic partnership between the University of Liverpool (UoL), Unilever R&D, Research England, and EPSRC’s Royce Institute, the 11,500 m² facility houses over £20M of open access scientific equipment, a 20 FTE technical support team, over 100 industry, and 250 academic researchers. We will discuss accelerating product development in the MIF, and where we see the future of R&D programs such as Prof. Cooper’s 2020 work on the mobile robotic chemist, a robotic platform that performed 688 autonomous experiments over eight days.