Steve Finkbeiner, MD, PhD, and his lab at Gladstone Institutes developed the first ever “thinking microscope,” which uses AI not only to analyze data, but also to design and conduct experiments—all without human intervention.

The fully automated platform can track individual cells for hours, days, or even months, allowing researchers to simultaneously run thousands of individual experiments and watch as disease unfolds in living cells.

The team is now working to integrate an AI method called reinforcement learning to enable the microscope to do experiments on its own, learn from what it did, and then solve problems it’s tasked with.

Using this AI-powered tool, Gladstone scientists are trying to better understand the cause of diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and ALS.

In this video, Steve Finkbeiner and Jeremy Linsley explain how this microscope works and how it could eventually lead to new treatments, or cures.

Read more about work in Finkbeiner’s lab.

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