Amii and New Harvest announce phase two in groundbreaking efforts to propel cellular agriculture forward

Call for proposals now open for a 1-year project residency

Key Points:

• Amii and New Harvest continue their collaboration exploring how AI/ML can address crucial challenges in food production.
• In Phase 1, researchers reviewed existing literature and published a report on how ML could be applied to cellular agriculture (the production of animal products from cell cultures rather than from animal husbandry).
• Phase 2 invites cellular agriculture and ML researchers and experts to contribute; applications are now open for project residencies

Amii and New Harvest are excited to announce phase two of their research collaboration focused on applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in cellular agriculture. Last year the research consortium set out to make inroads in advancing the underdeveloped field of cellular agriculture. Phase two initiates a year-long project with an open call to researchers and experts specializing in cellular agriculture and machine learning who want to apply ML solutions to solve the challenges in the field. The research project is supported by Schmidt Sciences, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt.

"As a leader in advancing fundamental AI science, Amii is thrilled at the progress of our research collaboration with New Harvest”, said Cam Linke, CEO of Amii. “With our outcomes in phase one, we’ve laid concrete pathways towards exponential advancements in the domain and further catalyzed AI's potential to make a significant global impact. We look forward to and are encouraged by the launch of phase two."

Historically, there has been limited academic literature on the applications of AI/ML in the field of cellular agriculture — which is defined as the production of animal products from cell cultures rather than from animal husbandry. The confined availability of academic research – coupled with a competitive private industry that is subject to intense IP protection – creates barriers to growth for the field that have the potential to have a massive impact on global sustainable development areas such as environmental sustainability, resource conservation, food security, public health, and climate action.

Phase one of the research collaboration focused on deepening the understanding of how to apply AI/ML to cultured meat. The project team conducted an in-depth literature review of ML applications in cultured meat and submitted the manuscript for a thorough peer review. In the spirit of New Harvest’s mandate to default to open, the preprint is now available to initiate activity in this exciting and emerging field.

“The process of researching and writing this review highlighted the knowledge gap we're trying to address,” said Dr. Breanna Duffy, Director of Responsible Research & Innovation. “Technical experts in both machine learning and cellular agriculture need to come together and speak each other's languages. To do that we need a shared canon of knowledge and data that are openly accessible. We hope this paper is the first step towards that goal.”

The deadline to apply for the residency is July 15, 2024. Read more about the opportunity here.