{"id":801522,"date":"2026-05-16T22:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T22:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/801522\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T22:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T22:24:14","slug":"david-mccormick-tours-ai-powered-biotech-labs-at-penn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/801522\/","title":{"rendered":"David McCormick tours AI-powered biotech labs at Penn"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., toured a University of Pennsylvania research laboratory Friday to highlight how artificial intelligence can supercharge advances in biomedical and drug development.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I come here for a visit, I leave just inspired by all the wonderful, incredible discoveries and progress,\u201d McCorkmick told researchers.\n<\/p>\n

AIRFoundry, an AI-driven research lab funded by the National Science Foundation, is located at One uCity Square near Penn\u2019s campus. The lab uses AI, robotics and automation to speed the development of RNA-based medicines, drug delivery systems and other biotechnology applications.\n <\/p>\n

Years become weeks<\/p>\n

Researchers at the incubator said AI is changing biomedical research by helping scientists process large datasets, predict successful drug formulations and automate parts of the discovery process.\n<\/p>\n

That has meant a highly accelerated development process, bringing ideas to production in a much shorter time.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYears of work become weeks of work, and that\u2019s sort of the compression that you see when you use AI to do these things,\u201d Jake Gardner, an assistant professor of computer science who works at the lab, told McCormick.
\n\"AU.S. Sen. David McCormick, R-Pa. tours Penn\u2019s AIRFoundry on Friday, May 15, 2026. (Carmen Russell-Sluchansky\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

The technology has the potential to reduce the drug discovery timeline and associated costs, and may benefit fields beyond medicine, such as agriculture and veterinary science.\n<\/p>\n

Right now, \u201ca company has to search for 10 years and spend hundreds of millions to billions of dollars just looking for a potential candidate that they\u2019ll then take through the clinical pipeline,\u201d said Andrew Hanna, a bioengineering doctoral student working at the lab. \u201cThe goal is to turn that from like a 10-year process to like a six-month process.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The visit also highlighted the commercialization efforts tied to Penn\u2019s research ecosystem. Several researchers described how startup companies have emerged from university labs.\n<\/p>\n

One of those, InfiniFluidics, created a prototype system that uses robotics and AI-processing to speed up the creation of RNA-based drug treatments. Co-founder Daeyeon Lee said hospitals, research labs and pharmaceutical companies could eventually use the technology.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a unique project even for Penn, which is known for interdisciplinarity,\u201d said Lee, who is also a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Penn. \u201cWe have computer scientists that are building AI platforms so that we can design experiments for people, but then we have people working in molecular biology. We have people like me or engineers that come together to build these facilities and help researchers.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The AI talent pipeline<\/p>\n

Penn boasts of being the first Ivy League university to offer an undergraduate degree in AI<\/a>, from which the first six students graduated this weekend.\n<\/p>\n

The curriculum includes fundamental courses, as well as \u201cAI for health\u201d and \u201cAI for robotics.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

George Pappas, Penn\u2019s AI program director, told McCormick they expect the program to grow to 250 students next year.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just advancing AI, but how to impact other disciplines and other sectors of the economy through AI,\u201d Pappas said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":801523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,738,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,24003,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-801522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-university-of-pennsylvania","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116586602939923073","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}