Cloud Science Labs transform physical laboratories into programmable, remotely accessible scientific infrastructure so that researchers can use them from anywhere and at any time.
Today, ability to do cutting-edge scientific research is constrained by the availability of labs with the required instruments and trained lab operators. At the same time, shared labs with sophisticated instrument are often unable to fully utilize their high-value instruments because often researchers miss providing value of some parameters (which they assumed were well-known industry standards). This results in unnecessary back-and-forth between lab operators and researchers, resulting is ineffective use of high-demand instruments.
Traditionally, scientific experimentation is tightly coupled to physical labs, specific instruments, and local operators. Cloud Science Labs remove these constraints by decoupling experiment definition from experiment execution – much like cloud computing decoupled software from physical servers.
Write Once, Run Anywhere
Using OSS, researchers define experiments as fully-specified workflows or protocols. These workflows can then be dispatched to compatible instruments across distributed labs – whether they are in a shared national facility, an institutional lab, or an industrial R&D center. The researcher does not need to be physically present, nor do they need to tailor their workflow to a specific vendor or operator.
At their core, Cloud Science Labs provide a “write once, run anywhere” model for physical experiments – analogous to how cloud computing allowed software to be executed on any physical server, which helped to make compute resources location-independent. This allows Cloud Science Labs to provide reproducible workflows that can be rerun across labs, instruments, and time.
OSS platform handles how and where the experiment is executed. OSS platform guarantees that the same protocol can be executed once or hundreds of times without re-engineering. By taking care of the operational details, OSS enables scalable experimentation by allowing researchers to focus on scientific intent, such as:
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- What experiment should run
- Under what conditions
- With what constraints and success criteria
Cloud Science Labs treat experiments as first-class computational artifacts – executable, inspectable, and repeatable.
From Physical Labs to Programmable Infrastructure
Cloud Science Labs do not replace physical labs – they abstract them.
Each physical lab, instrument, or operator is exposed through standardized interfaces that describe what it can do, under what constraints, and with what guarantees. OSS uses these abstractions to ensure that experiments execute safely and consistently, even when the underlying hardware differs.
To perform the experiments consistently in a repeatable manner, Cloud Science Labs break down high-level actions into smaller, stateless tasks. These tasks can be performed either by automated instruments, lab robots, or human operators. Cloud Science Labs support hybrid execution, wherein tasks can be combined by either human or robotic operators. Moreover, OSS ensures deterministic and auditable execution, where every step, parameter, and condition is recorded by the platform for subsequent verification. This provides full traceability, which is more scalable and robust than post-factor manual or digital lab notebooks as well as other record-keeping mechanisms.
These capabilities make OSS the ideal platform for providing remote and on-demand access to high-value, high-demand instruments such as CryoEM, XRD, TEM, AFM, spectrometers, and synthesis equipment.
Why This Matters
Cloud Science Labs lay the foundation for modern, scalable science:
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- They make advanced experimentation accessible to every researcher
- They enable collaboration across institutions without moving people or samples unnecessarily
- They ensure experiments are reproducible by design, not by best effort
- By capturing not only experimental results but also rich metadata – parameters, conditions, and execution context – Cloud Science Labs form the operational backbone required for closed-loop, AI-assisted experimentation. The provide the infrastructure needed for AI Science Labs to reason, execute, and optimize experiments at scale.
Cloud Science Labs are the bridge between today’s manual or automated labs and tomorrow’s AI-powered science labs. They allow researchers to design, execute, and replicate experiments programmatically, across instruments and labs – with no dependence on specific hardware or operators.
To build cloud science labs, the Universal Lab architecture supports:
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- ULA: Device-independent experiment specifications so that experiments can be executed anywhere on the cloud.
- ULE: Lab engine that executes scientific workflows in a precise, repeatable, and auditable manner.
- ULI: Extensible interfaces so that experiments can be performed irrespective of the specific make and model of the required instruments available in a given physical instance of the universal lab.
Together, these layers create a universal, programmable foundation for building cloud-accessible science labs, where experiments can be written once and executed seamlessly across different labs, instruments, and robotic systems.