Highly Commended: IChemE Global Awards 2025

The Computational Modelling and The World Avatar research team is proud to share that our project, “Revolutionizing Laboratory Automation Across Sectors and Regions with The World Avatar,” was Highly Commended for the Process Automation and Digitalisation Award at the IChemE Global Awards 2025.

The award acknowledges our work on the Digital Laboratory Framework, a knowledge-model-driven system that connects laboratory assets, software, and distributed experimental platforms via semantic interoperability and autonomous computational agents. Built upon The World Avatar, the Digital Laboratory Framework integrates laboratory operations, data provenance, optimisation workflows, and real-time experimentation across global sites.

Key contributors to this work include Dr Simon Rihm, whose doctoral research at CARES shaped the Digital Laboratory Framework architecture, and Professor Markus Kraft, who has led the development of The World Avatar. Demonstrations across the CARES Laboratory, the University of Cambridge, and the Pharma Innovation Programme Singapore (PIPS) have shown the potential to accelerate scientific discovery, reduce environmental impact, and support sustainable, automated research ecosystems.

The award was accepted on behalf of the team by Dr Jethro Akroyd at the ceremony in Manchester.