Northwestern University has received a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to build the nation's first publicly accessible, AI-powered cloud laboratory for protein engineering. Called the AI-Driven, Rapid, Experimental Automation Machine (DREAM) Cloud Lab, this facility will allow researchers across the country to remotely design, build and test proteins without needing expensive equipment in their own labs. The project represents a significant shift in how biotechnology research gets done, moving from isolated institutional labs to a shared, AI-enabled national resource.

What Problem Does This Lab Actually Solve?

Proteins do nearly everything in living systems, from fighting disease to breaking down plastics. Scientists increasingly want to engineer custom proteins for applications like developing new medicines, recycling materials, detecting environmental contaminants and recovering critical minerals. But there's a major bottleneck: designing proteins is fast with AI now, but actually building and testing them remains slow, expensive and tedious. DREAM is designed to eliminate that bottleneck by automating the build-and-test cycle.

Here's how it works in practice. Researchers will use a cloud-based interface to specify what function they want a protein to perform. AI models will then propose promising designs. After those designs pass rigorous biosafety and biosecurity reviews, robotic systems will automatically synthesize and test the proteins. The experimental data flows back into the AI models, continuously improving them. This creates what researchers call a "design-build-test-learn" cycle that dramatically accelerates protein development.

How Will DREAM Change Protein Engineering Research?

• Scale of Data Generation: During the four-year award period, DREAM's team expects to synthesize and characterize more than 300,000 proteins, generating up to 30 million data points. This will create one of the largest publicly available datasets for AI-guided protein engineering.
• Open-Access Knowledge Base: All data and AI models will be released through an open-access framework, establishing a national knowledge base that scientists can build upon for years to come. This democratizes access to cutting-edge protein engineering capabilities.
• Regional Biotech Hub: DREAM will be housed within Northwestern's Center for Synthetic Biology, co-located with the Querrey InQbation Lab startup incubator. This positioning allows research breakthroughs to quickly transition into new companies and products, strengthening the Chicago and Illinois biotechnology ecosystem.

The facility is one of 20 inaugural NSF-funded Programmable Cloud Laboratory test beds being established nationwide. Rather than each institution purchasing and maintaining expensive scientific equipment independently, this network allows scientists to remotely program experiments, access cutting-edge instruments and accelerate discovery through shared data and AI tools. DREAM will serve as the protein-engineering hub within this broader network, sharing data, AI models and best practices with other cloud laboratory nodes.

"DREAM will positively transform our society, spinning out new companies and creating new jobs by accelerating new technologies for manufacturing, critical mineral mining, healthy aging, agriculture and advanced materials," said Julius B. Lucks, principal investigator of DREAM and the Margery Claire Carlson Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern.

Julius B. Lucks, Principal Investigator, AI-Driven, Rapid, Experimental Automation Machine Cloud Lab at Northwestern University

Why Does This Matter Beyond Academia?

The implications extend far beyond university research. Startups and industry partners will have access to world-class AI-driven protein-engineering capabilities and open-source models, removing barriers that typically only well-funded institutions can overcome. The facility will serve as a training ground for students and researchers in AI, laboratory automation and synthetic biology, helping prepare the workforce for one of the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy.

The project also reflects a broader strategic shift in how the U.S. is approaching biotechnology innovation. By creating shared, AI-enabled infrastructure rather than siloed institutional labs, the NSF is betting that collaboration and data sharing will accelerate breakthroughs. Northwestern's selection as one of the inaugural test beds underscores the university's leadership at the intersection of engineering, AI and biology.

"Building and testing the proteins are historically tedious, slow and costly steps. To overcome this issue, the DREAM facility leverages cutting-edge developments in the synthesis of proteins using cell-free technologies that were pioneered at Northwestern," explained Danielle Tullman-Ercek, co-director of the Center for Synthetic Biology and co-PI of DREAM.

Danielle Tullman-Ercek, James N. and Nancy J. Farley Professor in Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University

The DREAM Cloud Lab represents a fundamental reimagining of how scientific research gets funded, conducted and shared. By combining AI-guided design with automated experimentation and open-access data, Northwestern and the NSF are creating infrastructure that could accelerate solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges, from sustainable materials to new medicines. The facility is expected to become operational over the four-year funding period, with results and models released publicly throughout.