Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik has been named Editor-in-Chief of the new journal Digital Discovery, which published its first issue this month.
The journal will feature data-driven approaches to scientific discoveries. Aspuru-Guzik says the central thesis of Digital Discovery is that technological drivers, including human–machine interaction, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, big data and robotics, wiil meet with the fields of chemistry, materials science, and biology to give birth to a new field at their interface.
"I like to call this new field 'accelerated science'”, says Aspuru-Guzik. "Whatever the future name of this emerging field settles into, its ultimate goal is to reduce the time-to-discovery by reimagining the discovery, optimization and scaleup workflows."
Aspuru-Guzik's efforts in starting this journal parallel those of starting the Acceleration Consortium, which is building an international coalition of researchers – within academia, industry and government – around the field of accelerated discovery.