Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a partnership with the Astera Institute related to the first round of investment in building a national network of automated laboratory infrastructure, known as the Programmable Cloud Laboratories (PCL) Test Bed Initiative. The NSF will spend $380 million spread across 20 awardees to advance AI and automated instrumentation […]

Astera recently hosted its first essay competition, focused around metascience. This competition was always more about starting a conversation than finding a bunch of perfect solutions. We wanted to hear from working researchers, not policy experts or administrators, about the structural problems they actually run into, described concretely enough that someone could do something about […]

Building the missing data layer for precision medicine delivery

Today, alongside the launch of Radial, we are opening an essay competition that I’ve been ruminating on for some time. Namely, inviting active scientists from any sector to share concrete research challenges that can inform our future work at Astera. We’re interested in your hypotheses about what broad structural or systemic issues contribute to the bottlenecks you […]

Dileep George is joining Astera as Head of AI, leading our AGI research division. Working alongside our Chief Scientist Doris Tsao, he and the team will explore novel, brain-inspired computational architectures to accelerate the development of safe, efficient and aligned AGI. Astera will continue to support this effort with over $1 billion in committed resources […]

Important science and technology development often falls through the cracks of public funding and private markets, i.e. work that may be high impact but risky, requires long timelines, or involves unpopular ideas. These areas are ripe for philanthropy. And as AI ushers civilization toward an event horizon, we need more people working on the hardest […]

The Astera Institute is excited to launch a major new neuroscience research effort led by Dr. Doris Tsao, who will be joining as Chief Scientist for Astera Neuro. We seek to understand one of the deepest mysteries of science: how the brain produces conscious experience, cognition, and intelligent behavior. Astera will support this effort with […]

We’re excited to introduce three new entrepreneurs to our residency cohort

Applications are now open for our Fall cohort, due May 7

Pat Walters | Chief Scientist, OpenADMET

Proteins are the programmable manufacturing material of the future.

A new Astera Resident investigates not just how transformative fusion could be, but what would have to be true to get there.

Going up a level from data generation to think about the data systems we design and embed

A conversation with Adam Shai and Paul Riechers, co-founders of Simplex

A conversation with Astera Resident Edwin Kite on applied planetary science, applied astrobiology, and what it would take to terraform Mars

A perspective from Eli Dourado, Astera’s Head of Strategic Investments

Why we’re no longer funding journal publications

A conversation with Astera Resident Dakota Gruener on uncovering answers and driving action on how we can address our rapidly warming climate