James Zou, Stanford University

This talk is part of the AI Research Seminar Series

Abstract:
AI agentslarge language models equipped with tools and reasoning capabilitiesare emerging as powerful research enablers. This talk will explore how agentic AI can accelerate scientific discoveries. Ill first introduce the Virtual Laba collaborative team of AI scientist agents conducting in silico research meetings to tackle open-ended research projects. As an example application, the Virtual Lab designed new nanobody binders to recent Covid variants that we experimentally validated. Then I will introduce the Virtual Biotech, a platform where tens of thousands of AI agents work together to advance drug discovery and development.

Speaker Bio:
James Zou is an associate professor of Biomedical Data Science, CS and EE at Stanford University. He works on developing cutting-edge AI for biomedical applications. His group developed many widely used innovations including EchoNet AI (FDA cleared for assessing cardiac function), Gradio (used by over a million developers), and SyntheMol (NY Times 2024 Good Tech). He has received the Overton Prize, Sloan Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, two Chan-Zuckerberg Investigator Awards, a Top Ten Clinical Achievement Award, best paper awards at ICML and other AI conferences, and faculty awards from Google, Amazon, Adobe and Apple.