SLAS International 2025: Three Key Takeaways
Impulsonics’ CEO Luke Cox takes us through what he learnt at this year’s SLAS in San Diego
SLAS International is the largest laboratory automation conference in the world. Over 3 days, hundreds of vendors and thousands of scientists and engineers descend on San Diego to talk cells, computers and most of all robots.
This year was no different and I’ve been restlessly roaming the floor, talking to scientists and engineers from across the industry. For you dear reader I also doggedly pursued the knowledge into coffee shops, pubs and strange nightclubs below Spanish restaurants (my dedication knows no bounds).
Here are my three lessons - some of them from the floor, some from the talks and some gleaned through barroom chatter:
1. Roving robots are out, plate trains are back!
In 2022, I saw a talk from someone telling me that we needed to redesign our buildings to have 2m wide corridors so we could have an autonomous robot wandering around. In 2023 at SLAS nearly every self-respecting stand had a mobile robot. This year I didn’t see a single one. Instead, I saw multiple different places with interconnected modules, one next to the other with a little plate train between them.
Perhaps, rather than getting an autonomous, human-safe robot that can roam your lab, it’s much easier to just put the things you want to use together next to each other.
Prime examples include Automata and Ginkgo Bioworks but there were many others.
2. The Algorithm must be fed
With all the buzz about AI it’s not surprising that it would be impacting the industry. In lab automation, though, the results are leading to an unsurprising conclusion: more!
More experiments, larger data sets, better quality data, more, more, more!
All of this seems to be fuelling a scale-up in systems. See the Formulatrix Cellmatic as a prime example.
Musicians and modellers alike have known for a while that ‘garbage in = garbage out’ and AI is no different. The quality and quantity of data it demands is huge but ultimately more data requires more (and better quality) reality as a feedstock.
3. Covid is casting a long (and positive) shadow
Many of the most talented young people who came into the lab automation industry did so through covid testing labs. Graduating with a biology degree in the middle of a pandemic leads to some predictable outcomes in terms of where people work. Unsurprisingly, in places with such a demand for high throughput and reliability there was a huge demand for automation.
However, as Paula Fogel on the SLAS Early Career Advisory Committee told me: “I don’t know anyone who has left lab automation.”
Hopefully a bright sign for the future of this field.
4. (Bonus lesson): Just because someone looks like Tom Cruise, doesn’t mean they can sing
One might even say the correlation is negative.
It has been a great show. I’ve loved talking to some of the most interesting people across the industry and I can’t wait for next year’s SLAS in Boston (7-11 February 2026).
See you then!
Luke