Lee Cronin, Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and founder of Chemify, dives into the fascinating world of automating chemistry. He discusses how Chemify's 'chemifarms' translate code into molecules, likening it to a cloud service for chemistry. The conversation explores a new programming language for chemistry achieving Turing completeness, the integration of quantum computing for better efficiency, and the potential for personalized medicine. Cronin emphasizes the importance of collaboration and accessibility in revolutionizing drug discovery and molecular design.
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insights INSIGHT
Chemify Is The AWS For Chemistry
Chemify builds chemifarms, automated server farms that turn code into molecules for discovery and production.
It acts like an AWS for chemistry, accelerating molecule design and manufacturing on demand.
insights INSIGHT
Chemistry Achieves Turing-Completeness
Chemistry has been proven Turing-complete by defining four core primitives: add matter, subtract matter, add energy, remove energy.
This allows any chemical synthesis to be encoded programmatically and executed reliably.
insights INSIGHT
Quantum and Classical Computation Unity
Quantum computing and classical computing are fundamentally the same phenomena applied differently.
Quantum control in chemistry can yield high selectivity and zero waste without needing quantum computers.
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Jim talks with Lee Cronin about Chemify, his startup that aims to automate chemistry through "chemifarms" that turn code into molecules. They discuss Chemify as an AWS for chemistry, the development of a chemical programming language & its evolution to Turing completeness, quantum vs classical chemistry computation, open source tools & academic access, robotics & automation in chemistry, catalyst discovery & optimization, integration with tools like AlphaFold, business models, venture capital funding, supply chain implications, distributed manufacturing, personalized medicine possibilities, and much more.
Episode Transcript
Currents 100: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on Time as an Object
Chemify
Lee Cronin is a chemist. He is the Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and the Founder & CEO of Chemify. He is known for his approach to the digitization of chemistry and developing digital-to-chemical transformation known as Chemputing which can turn code into reactions and molecules. He has also developed a new theory for evolution and selection called assembly theory which aims to quantify and explain how selection can occur in chemistry before biology. Lee is also exploring how chemical systems can compute, and what is needed for the evolution of intelligence, as well as designing a new type of computational system that uses information encoded in chemical reactions and molecules.
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