WINNER Evonik Self Driving Labs

Evonik’s Self Driving Labs is redefining pharmaceutical process development. As a globally available service within Evonik’s CDMO business, it is the first and only offering of its kind to combine advanced automation, data science, and chemical engineering into a fully autonomous development platform.By integrating continuous processing, 3D‑printed reactors, high‑throughput experimentation, PAT, and automated chromatography into a closed‑loop system, Self Driving Labs transforms experimentation into a continuous, data‑driven workflow. At its core, a Bayesian optimization algorithm designs and executes experiments, evaluates results in real time, and directs the next steps - fully orchestrated through a secure digital layer and the AIChemBuddy interface.The impact is measurable: dramatically accelerated development timelines, reduced reliance on scarce expert resources, and discovery of non-obvious solutions beyond human intuition. At the same time, Self Driving Labs enables precision in parameter optimization – beyond that of human capabilities – improves yield and energy efficiency and reduces waste – supporting more sustainable manufacturing. Rich, high-quality data further enables faster, and lower risk scale up.Self Driving Labs enables pharmaceutical companies to reach robust, scalable processes faster - reducing development timelines, resource consumption, and risk. It is setting a new benchmark for efficient, data-driven, and sustainable API development from the very first generation.