On December 11th, 2025, representatives from the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Energy and Materials recently visited ETH Zurich to explore the future of laboratories and materials discovery.

Hosted by the SwissCAT+ East team behind the Swiss national initiative for catalysis (SwissCAT+), led by Paco Laveille, in collaboration with Atinary, the visit showcased cutting-edge AI-driven lab automation and data-driven experimentation. Delegates got to experience firsthand how these innovations accelerate materials research by enabling faster, more efficient discovery, highlighting ETH and Atinary’s roles at the forefront of next-generation science and industry collaboration.

“The confluence of physical and digital technologies is no longer a future enabler of materials transitions. It is happening now. It is amazing to see how the deployment of autonomous labs is already allowing us to go beyond long-lived boundaries of innovation and efficiency – especially in a field with such an enormous economic relevance like catalysis.” 

Fernando Gomez, Head of the Future of Materials program in the Center for Energy and Materials, World Economic Forum.

“The age of self-driving labs is upon us. At Atinary, we are augmenting scientists with AI and robotics for the next human leap. It was an honor to showcase the power of Atinary SDLabs and our results with ETH Zurich – SwissCAT+ to the WEF’s Future of Materials program, demonstrating a proven 1,000x acceleration in critical materials research.”

Loïc Roch, Co-Founder and CTO, Atinary.

Learn more about our collaboration with SwissCAT+ and the findings from our publication demonstrating a 1,000x acceleration in catalysis R&D:

• Link to Press Release on Atinary-ETH Zurich Partnership
• Link to Publication: Ramirez et al. Accelerated exploration of heterogeneous CO2 hydrogenation catalysts by Bayesian-optimized high-throughput and automated experimentation. Chem Catalysis. 2024 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.checat.2023.100888
• Link to Research Highlight in Nature Catalysis
• Link to Atinary Webinar
• More about ETH Zurich Swiss CAT+