Episode 4: Meet research team member SARA

In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Sophia Chen interviews Carla Gomes, Michael Thompson, and Max Amsler of Cornell University about their robot, SARA—Scientific Autonomous Reasoning Agent. Unlike commonly known artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as the neural networks that enable image recognition, SARA performs within a closed loop system through a type of AI known as active learning, which allows the system to reason without a lot of training data. Within 30 minutes, SARA figured out how to make delta phase bismuth oxide and cool it to room temperature, saving the research team two full days of experiments.