The Cronin Group

Research in the Digital Chemistry group is motivated by the fascination for complex chemical systems, and the desire to construct complex functional molecular architectures that are not based on biologically derived building blocks.


Latest News

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November 2023: Lee Cronin takes part in Beyond Centre workshop on the origins of mathematics

Lee Cronin has taken part in a workshop entitled “Mathematics: Evolved or Eternal”, which took place at the Arizona State University Beyond Centre in November 2023. The focus of the workshop was exploring the relationship between mathematics and reality, and discussing fundamental questions such as how mathematics relates to the physical world and to evolution.

A full list of workshops from the Beyond Centre can be found on their website.

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October 2023: New "Assembly Theory" Unifies Physics and Biology to Explain Evolution and Complexity

An international team of researchers has developed a new theoretical framework that bridges physics and biology to provide a unified approach for understanding how complexity and evolution emerge in nature. This new work on “Assembly Theory,” published today in Nature, represents a major advance in our fundamental comprehension of biological evolution and how it is governed by the physical laws of the universe.

This research builds on the team’s previous work developing Assembly Theory as an empirically validated approach to life detection, with implications for the search …

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September 2023: Lee Cronin gives plenary at GDCh conference

Prof. Lee Cronin has given a plenary talk at the German Chemical Society (GDCh) conference in Leipzig, Germany. In his talk, Prof Cronin explained why ‘Chemputation’ is a universal approach to exploring chemical reactivity, discovering new reactions and molecules, and programming chemical synthesis using a chemical programming language that can run the processes on a chemputer.

Information on the talks that took place at the event can be found at https://gdch.app/article/wifo-2023-der-dienstag (in German).

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August 2023: Chemify raises £33M to digitize chemistry

University of Glasgow spin-out company Chemify has raised more than £33M in funding as part of their aim to digitize chemistry. The company, founded by Prof Lee Cronin, aims to digitally explore chemical space and has expanded to over 35 full-time employees since it first spun out in February 2022.

The successful funding round has been featured on the BBC News Website as well as other news outlets.

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July 2023: Assembly Theory paper receives International Society for Artificial Life award

The paper “Formalising the Pathways to Life Using Assembly Spaces”, published in Entropy in 2022, has been named “Outstanding Publication of 2022” by the International Society for Artificial Life. The paper describes the mathematical foundations of assembly theory, in terms of assembly spaces and the assembly index, which can be used to define a complexity threshold for biological influence. The award was made at the 2023 ALife conference in Sapporo, Japan.

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June 2023: Cronin Lab Technology Developed by Chemify Featured on BBC Click

Technology from the Cronin Group, which has been developed by spin-out company Chemify, has been featured on BBC Click. In the programme, Prof Cronin describes how new Chemputer technology being developed by Chemify will allow for the automation of manual, repetitive tasks, leaving the chemist free to focus on the creative and inventive aspects of chemistry. The full episode can be viewed on the BBC iPlayer.

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May 2023: Assembly Theory features in Quanta Magazine

Assembly theory, developed by researchers in the Cronin group and at Arizona State University, has featured in Quanta magazine, an online magazine that describes itself as an “editorially independent online publication launched by the Simons Foundation in 2012 to enhance public understanding of science”. The article, written by Philip Ball, describes assembly theory as a potential way to understand how life came to be, and to detect life on other worlds that may be entirely dissimilar to our own.

The full article can be read online on the Quanta Magazine website.

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April 2023: Lee Cronin presents ‘Foundations of Chemputation’ at Solvay Institute meeting

Lee Cronin has presented a talk at the Solvay Institute, a research institute based in Brussels with a mission to “support and develop curiosity-driven research in physics, chemistry and allied fields with the purpose of ‘enlarging and deepening the understanding of natural phenomena.'”

Prof Cronin’s talk, entitled “Foundations of Digital Chemistry – Chemputation” explored the development of ground-breaking robotic Chemputation technology for digitizing chemistry, and was part of a meeting on “New Ways to do Chemistry, Emerging Technologies for …

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March 2023: Congratulations to Silke Asche on Completing her PhD

Congratulations to Silke Asche on passing her PhD Viva, as the 77th doctor created in the Cronin Group.

Silke also won first place in the #RSCDigital theme of the recent RSC Twitter competition (see her entry here) so congratulations to Silke on her multiple achievements.

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February 2023: Cronin Group Members Take Part in RSC Twitter Poster Conference

Researchers from the Cronin Group have taken part in the 2023 #RSCPoster Twitter Conference. The 24 hour event, held annually, allows researchers across the world to share their research without the expense or ecological impact associated with attending a conventional conference.

Five researchers in the group tweeted posters, and answered a number of interesting questions about their work. Use the following links to view the posters and join in the conversations.

https://twitter.com/SilkeAsche/status/1630541113252519940

https://twitter.com/jacopo_zero/status/1630542754886434819 …

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January 2023: Assembly Theory Features in Scientific American

Assembly theory - a theory being developed by the Cronin group along with international collaborators - has been featured in the February 2023 edition of Scientific American. The article, “Life as We Don’t Know It”, explores how living systems on other worlds could work in very different ways from life on Earth. Assembly theory has been developed to distinguish living from non-living systems based on their complexity, and is agnostic to the specific molecules and structures involved, and so could be used to identify life in completely unfamiliar contexts.

The article can be …

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December 2022: Molecular Assembly Website Goes Live

A beta version of a new Molecular Assembly website has now gone live. Developed by researchers as the University of Glasgow and Arizona State University, the website allows users to query and investigate a database of molecular assembly (MA) indices for molecules, with upcoming functionality for live MA calculations. Molecular Assembly is an application of Assembly Theory, which is a novel theoretical framework developed to characterize the information required to build objects, and has applications in detecting alien life and searching chemical space for drug candidates.

Try out the website …

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Prof. Leroy (Lee) Cronin

Prof Leroy (Lee) Cronin
Regius Chair of Chemistry
Advanced Research Centre (ARC)
Level 5, Digital Chemistry
University of Glasgow
11 Chapel Lane
Glasgow G11 6EW
Tel: +44 141 330 6650
Email: lee.cronin@glasgow.ac.uk

Latest Publications

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490. Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution

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489. Digital design and 3D printing of reactionware for on demand synthesis of high value probes

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488. Robotic Modules for the Programmable Chemputation of Molecules and Materials

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487. Science opportunities with solar sailing smallsats

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486. Digitizing protocols into single reactors for the one-pot synthesis of nanomaterials

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485. Autonomous Execution of Highly Reactive Chemical Transformations in the Schlenkputer

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484. Aqueous solutions of super reduced polyoxotengstates as electron storage systems

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483. An Accelerated method for Investigating Spectral Properties of Dynamically Evolving Nanostructures

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482. Digitizing chemical discovery with a Bayesian explorer for interpreting reactivity data

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481. Multimodal Techniques for Detecting Alien Life using Assembly Theory and Spectroscopy

Group Funders

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