News & Updates

Excited to share two upcoming talks: Ivory Zhang will be presenting a tutorial, “Make Self-Driving Labs Work,” on June 15, 2026 at 9:00 AM at NUS Theatre 28. This session, co-hosting with NIMS, UBC and AC, will focus on practical ways to build and operate self-driving lab systems in real research environments. IvoryOS will introduce the robots and color matching education module for get scientists ready for Self-Driving Labs The following day, Ivory will be speaking about the IvoryOS ecosystem on June 16, 2026 at 4:00 PM at the Raffle City Convention Center, highlighting how modular orchestration and shared infrastructure can make Self-Driving Labs more accessible and scalable. Looking forward to connecting with researchers, engineers, and anyone building at the intersection of automation and science.

IvoryOS is excited to share two recent startup milestones: we have been named to Vancouver50 2026 by Scale Up Canada and selected as one of the Top 15 ventures advancing directly to Round 3 in the 2026 New Ventures BC Competition. Vancouver50 is described by Scale Up Canada as “Canada’s most scalable startups”. The initiative highlights Vancouver-based startups with strong potential for global commercialization, positive impact, and contribution to the local economy. The New Ventures BC Competition is one of BC’s leading startup competitions, helping early-stage companies refine their business models, strengthen their pitches, and connect with mentors, investors, and the broader innovation ecosystem. These recognitions are encouraging validation of our mission: to make lab automation more usable, reproducible, and scalable through open-source, Python-native infrastructure. We’re grateful to be building IvoryOS as part of Vancouver and BC’s growing innovation ecosystem.

We are excited to share a collaboration between IvoryOS and NIMO, developed at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), to connect AI-driven experimental planning with flexible laboratory workflow design. In this integration, NIMO provides the decision-making algorithms, while IvoryOS orchestrates the experimental workflows and laboratory hardware through an intuitive web interface. Together, they enable closed-loop autonomous experimentation with significantly reduced programming effort. LinkedIn Post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ugcPost-7437126745066979328-v1M5?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAABZpkSABiMvSAHEInN0hvza-6plr8vqreWY Preprint: https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15000670/v1

Ivory will be presenting IvoryOS at SLAS (Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening) 2026! On February 9, we have - Poster session: 12pm - 1pm - NexusXp poster lightning talk: 4:30pm - 5:00 session. If you’re going to SLAS in Boston, feel free to stop by and say hi! Shoutout to SLAS travel award, which makes it possible to share this work at SLAS2026.