THE MATERIALS DISCOVERY MISSION
Our mission is to discover and deliver breakthrough materials to build a safer future for all.
From energy storage to environmental cleanup, the path to a safer, more resilient world runs through materials innovation. But traditional discovery is too slow to address the world’s most urgent and intractable safety challenges. At UL Research Institutes' Materials Discovery lab, we accelerate the design and deployment of novel materials using AI, automation, and high-throughput experimentation, cutting years from development timelines and turning scientific possibility into global impact.
There is no time to waste to solve global challenges.
This is why UL Research Institutes has built a lab from the ground up to fuse AI with physical experimentation to rapidly deliver breakthrough materials for a safer world.
Computational Chemistry and AI
First principles computational chemistry, combined with AI and human expertise, provides a powerful way to explore new potential materials to solve global challenges.
Technology Readiness Level
TRL 1–2 Early stages of innovation focused on foundational science and concept formation
Automated Robotic Experimentation and Testing
Automated robotics and testing drastically speed up real-world experiments to test the feasibility of computational approaches. This data feeds back into our AI to constantly improve it.
Technology Readiness Level
TRL 3–5 Represents the transition from concept to early validation and prototyping
Prototype Demonstration
Scaling up promising materials into prototypes increases confidence, time to market, and helps feed back into our AI to add unprecedented layers in analytical capacity.
Technology Readiness Level
TRL 6–7 Scale-up and system integration testing in partnership with industrial collaborators
Our approach can compress time from inception (TRL 1) to prototype (TRL 7) down to months, not decades.
THE MATERIALS DISCOVERY LAB
Introducing the Materials Discovery Research Institute: A physical AI materials lab purposely built to usher in a safer future.
Research
The Materials Discovery lab is driven by UL Research Institutes' ruthless focus on solving safety challenges.
Our research targets two of the world’s most urgent safety needs: (1) engineering solutions that permanently remove pollutants from our air and water and (2) developing breakthrough materials for clean energy.
and Storage
Partnerships
Impact requires scale. Scale requires partners.
The scale of the intractable safety challenges we are trying to address are too complex to solve alone. That's why we're proud to work alongside a growing coalition of leaders in science, industry, and innovation — partners who share our urgency, ambition, and belief in the power of materials to shape a better future.
