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AI for Science Summit 2024: A community of researchers transforming science with AI
29 January 2025
Over 100 researchers converged at Magdalene College in November 2024 for the Accelerate Programme’s AI for Science Summit. Scientists from the UK, Europe, US, and Asia spent two days sharing breakthroughs and shaping the future of AI in scientific research.
AI Powers Scientific Breakthroughs
AI tools are fundamentally changing how scientists analyse data and make discoveries. Researchers are harnessing AI to advance understanding of complex systems, develop reasoning frameworks, and create robust solutions across fields. Summit participants demonstrated innovative applications that ranged from monitoring illegal wildlife trade to building explainable models for metabolic medicine.
Scientists Bridge the Expertise Gap
Computational scientists and domain experts emphasised how their collaboration drives success in AI for science. Their partnerships ensure AI tools directly address critical research questions. Astrophysicists, for example, carefully select between foundation models and multi-modal approaches based on their specific research needs. Such challenges are shared across fields and by sharing knowledge and experiences, researchers can capitalise on the power of AI across disciplinary boundaries.
Advancing the AI for science field through a global community
Participants stressed that unleashing AI’s full potential demands active engagement throughout the research sector. The community called for:
- AI and domain scientists to forge stronger connections
- Institutions to recognise research software engineers’ contributions to driving forward the field
- Universities to reimagine how they support interdisciplinary research
- Research teams to break down disciplinary barriers through open science
- Bidirectional flow of ideas between AI for science and the science of AI
Momentum Builds
The summit sparked new connections across disciplines and ignited fresh ideas for collaboration. We hope that these connections can lay foundations for future collaboration and the next steps for the community to move closer to realising the potential of AI for Science.
Thank you to all of our speakers, panellists and participants for their contributions across the two days of discussion.
If you are interested in taking part in future community events, please contact the team on accelerate-science@cst.cam.ac.uk.
Discussions from the event and thoughts from the community board were recorded by Scriberia in graphic captures which can be viewed here.
