KAIST

< From left, KAIST President Choongsik Bae; Dan Shine, Senior Vice President and President, Analytical Instruments Group, Thermo Fisher Scientific; Soo Jin Seok, Vice President and General Manager, Korea and Taiwan, Thermo Fisher Scientific >

KAIST is partnering with Thermo Fisher Scientific to establish SHARE Hub, a next-generation autonomous research hub where AI designs experiments and robots execute them. The initiative aims to accelerate scientific discovery and drug development by integrating researchers, AI systems, laboratory robotics, and experimental data into a self-driving research environment.

KAIST (President Choongsik Bae) announced on August 27 that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Thermo Fisher Scientific on August 26 to establish SHARE Hub and pursue broader strategic collaboration.

The MOU signing ceremony brought together KAIST President Choongsik Bae and senior executives from Thermo Fisher Scientific, including Dan Shine, Senior Vice President and President of the Analytical Instruments Group; Soo Jin Seok, Vice President and General Manager for Korea and Taiwan; Manoj Prasad, Vice President of IT & Digital Solutions for Asia Pacific and the Middle East; and Mark Fish, Vice President and General Manager of Digital Science & Automation Solutions.The two institutions will combine KAIST’s multidisciplinary expertise in life sciences, chemistry, medicine, AI, and robotics with Thermo Fisher Scientific’s advanced research equipment and capabilities in laboratory automation and systems integration to establish SHARE Hub.*
*SHARE Hub: A self-driving laboratory connecting human intuition, AI reasoning, robotic execution, and experimental data.

“SHARE Hub is not simply another laboratory equipped with advanced instruments. It is an open-innovation platform where scientists, AI researchers, engineers, and industry partners can jointly develop and validate next-generation autonomous laboratories,” said KAIST President Choongsik Bae. “We expect SHARE Hub to bring KAIST’s ‘Beyond Laboratory’ strategy to life and evolve into a global collaboration model that sets a new standard for the future of scientific research.”

Dan Shine, Senior Vice President and President, Analytical Instruments Group at Thermo Fisher Scientific, said, “As advanced analytical technologies become increasingly connected with AI and automation, the way scientists generate and interpret data and translate it into new discoveries is rapidly evolving. By bringing together KAIST’s outstanding research capabilities with Thermo Fisher Scientific’s analytical technologies and scientific expertise, we look forward to applying and validating new ways of working in real research environments through the SHARE Hub and turning promising ideas into meaningful scientific outcomes.”

SHARE Hub goes beyond conventional laboratory automation, in which machines simply perform predefined tasks. Researchers will formulate scientific questions and set research directions, and then AI will design experiments, robots will execute them, and the resulting data will be fed back into the AI system to inform subsequent experiments.

Recent advances in AI have significantly accelerated the design of new drug candidates. However, synthesizing candidate compounds and evaluating their efficacy and physicochemical properties still require considerable time, cost, and specialized expertise. Existing laboratory automation systems have also faced challenges integrating individual instruments, operating software, and AI systems, making it difficult to analyze results in real time, and autonomously select and execute subsequent experiments.

To overcome these limitations, SHARE Hub will be built around “Digital Plug & Play” and “Physical Plug & Play” architectures, enabling new AI systems, robots, and laboratory instruments to be integrated flexibly. This modular approach will allow rapidly evolving technologies to be introduced into research environments and promptly evaluated for their performance and usability under real-world conditions.

Rather than focusing solely on equipment deployment or experimental automation, the KAIST–Thermo Fisher Scientific partnership will jointly develop the enabling technologies and research methods required for autonomous laboratories. KAIST’s foundational technologies and research ideas in AI, biotechnology, and engineering will be combined with Thermo Fisher Scientific’s research instruments, automation platforms, and systems-integration capabilities. These capabilities will then be integrated, tested, and refined within SHARE Hub.

As part of this effort, the two institutions will launch a “Challenge Program” to develop core AI, robotics, and automation technologies, and apply them to real-world challenges in scientific research and drug discovery. Through the program, KAIST will serve as a co-developer, early adopter, and validation partner, helping drive the development and advancement of emerging technologies.

SHARE Hub is envisioned not as an autonomous laboratory dedicated to a single research team or discipline, but as an open research hub where KAIST researchers from diverse fields can collaborate with external partners to test and apply new technologies. By bringing life sciences, chemistry, and medicine together with AI and robotics, the hub will develop new autonomous experimentation technologies and research methods while addressing real-world scientific challenges.

KAIST plans to gradually expand participation to companies, universities, research institutes, and hospitals in Korea and abroad. In doing so, it aims to develop SHARE Hub into an open-innovation testbed for the joint development and validation of research equipment and AI, robotics, and automation technologies. The ultimate goal is to establish SHARE Hub as a global benchmark for autonomous science and drug discovery, pioneering new research methods and sharing the resulting technologies with research communities worldwide.

“SHARE Hub is not merely about automating experiments. Its central purpose is to connect researchers with technologies that enable AI and robots to tackle real scientific questions,” said Hee-Seung Lee, Dean of the KAIST College of Natural Sciences and Director of the InnoCORE AI-CRED Institute (AI Co-Research & Education for Innovative Drug). “We plan to develop the hub into an open research environment where researchers from different disciplines and industry partners can jointly develop and validate new technologies.”

KAIST also held the “KAIST–Thermo Fisher Scientific Mini-Symposium for SHARE” on the afternoon of August 26. During the symposium, KAIST researchers presented their latest work in major areas of autonomous science, including autonomous drug discovery, AI-driven protein design, next-generation therapeutics, and autonomous chemical experimentation.

At the symposium, Mark Fish, Vice President and General Manager of Digital Science & Automation Solutions at Thermo Fisher Scientific, presented a vision for the future of autonomous science and drug discovery. Building on the discussions at the event, the two institutions explored future directions and plans for collaborative research.

< SHARE Mini-Symposium Group Photo >

< Scene from the SHARE Mini-Symposium >