Why collaboration is key to scientific discovery

Science knows no borders. It may sound obvious, perhaps even clichéd, but this mantra is something that must be remembered in ongoing political negotiations over Horizon Europe, which could see Switzerland and the UK excluded from EU research projects.

We need more, not fewer, researchers collaborating to solve today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. By closely working with Swiss and British researchers, who have long played key roles, Horizon Europe projects will benefit – as they have in the past.

This is the motivation behind ETH Zurich, which collaborates with IBM Research on nanotechnology, leading the Stick to Science campaign. This calls on all three parties – Switzerland, the UK and the EU – to try and solve the current stalemate and put Swiss and British association agreements in place.

More than 240 prominent scientists have already publicly weighed in as ‘first signatories’ in support of the initiative. This includes 12 Nobel prize winners; three Fields medal winners; and prominent figures such as former EU commissioner and ex-director general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy.

Former director-general of DG Research and Innovation at the European Commission and key architect of Horizon 2020, Robert-Jan Smits, and renowned mathematician and French politician, Professor Cedric Villani, have also signed.

Here at IBM Research, we have always promoted and encouraged collaboration – and now more than ever with our Discovery Accelerators being launched around the globe, as part of our overarching strategy dubbed 'Accelerated Discovery'.

These Discovery Accelerators are hubs whose purpose is to make available and to integrate breakthroughs in what we call ‘hard tech’ – quantum computing, artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid cloud and high-performance computing.

The idea is to foster quantum and AI ecosystems to develop new materials faster. We need these now more than ever, to create drugs in light of outbreaks like the COVID-19 pandemic; to store energy more efficiently; to feed the world’s surging population; and so much more.

And our chances of successfully addressing all these global challenges increase greatly when we work together, in open collaborations – in a spirit akin to the motivation that has always underpinned Horizon Europe.

Our latest Discovery Accelerator has just been launched in Canada, with an IBM Quantum System One computer deployed in Bromont, Quebec. The initiative will give researchers from across Canada and beyond access to a wide range of AI models and high performance computing systems to explore how to faster discover new materials.

It’s our third quantum system installation and partnership, following those at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute and Japan's Kawasaki Business Innovation Center. We also plan to build on-premises quantum systems at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic and Yonsei University in Seoul.

And then there are Discovery Accelerators like the one at Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation in the UK, which has given researchers access to IBM's quantum computers through the cloud, as well as access to commercial and emerging AI technologies.

All these Discovery Accelerators are rooted in collaboration and a free flow of ideas. We are changing the way we go about discovering new materials, traditionally created using a long and expensive trial and error process.

Identifying a new molecule this way often takes around a decade of research, and creating a material based on that molecule easily costs between $10 million and $100 million. But classical computing, AI and quantum computing are now replacing this cumbersome method.

It's no longer just theory. Our researchers have recently cut down the material discovery process to just months in Project Photoresist. With the help of AI and robotics systems they predicted, simulated, and tested a new photoacid generator – an important ingredient in semiconductor manufacturing. The scientists created the new material 100 times faster than using more traditional methods.

There are plenty of other good examples of industry-academic collaborations, but there should be more. Stanford University’s AI Lab works closely with a number of industry partners, including IBM Research, Google and Wells Fargo.

And when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the US National Science Foundation, NASA, several US government agencies and national labs, universities and companies came to create the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium.

The project saw companies who were traditional rivals – such as Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Intel, among others – partnering with members of different fields to accelerate research in ways to end the pandemic.

Again, the most important message here is collaboration. Be it between industry and academia or multiple global partners, working together is imperative for progress.

We urge the EU, Switzerland and the UK to quickly put in place association agreements so that these two leading research countries can once again contribute scientifically and financially to the strength of Horizon Europe, and to truly open, inclusive and excellence-driven research across the continent.