IBM researchers working towards enabling a 'more sustainable future'

IBM researchers are working on speeding up the discovery of new materials and novel uses of existing ones to help address global challenges like rising CO2 emissions, climate change and life-threatening viruses, the company said.

IBM researchers are working on speeding up the discovery of new materials and novel uses of existing ones to help address global challenges like rising CO2 emissions, climate change and life-threatening viruses, the company said. In its annual '5 in 5' predictions, IBM said materials design and discovery has a critical place in the 21st century economy and has a broad impact that spans industries.

Hence, it is critical to rethink how the world creates, consumes and disposes of materials, it added. "This year's '5 in 5' predictions are focused on accelerating the discovery of new materials to enable a more sustainable future. IBM researchers are working to speed up the discovery of new materials or novel uses of existing ones to help address many of the global challenges we face today," it said. The company added that it is committed to dedicating its technology, talent and resources towards advancing research and the discovery of new materials, including in five core areas in the next five years.

These include capturing and transforming CO2 to mitigate climate change, replicate nature's ability to convert nitrogen in the soil into nitrate-rich fertiliser and discover new materials for safer and more environmentally-preferable batteries capable of supporting a renewable-based energy grid and more sustainable transportation. The work will also focus on helping tech industry to more quickly produce sustainable materials for the production of semiconductors and electronic devices, and aiding physicians and front-line workers in combating novel, life-threatening viruses on a larger scale than is currently possible. IBM noted that it typically takes roughly 10 years and upwards of USD 10-100 million on average to discover one new material with specific properties and it can take up to USD 2.6 billion and more than 10 years for a new drug to reach market. "The '5 in 5' predictions are a great way to convey how breakthroughs in science can positively impact and change some aspect of our lives. 2020 has re-iterated the essential role of science and the need for clear actions to combat some of the greatest challenges of our time," Gargi Dasgupta, Director (IBM Research India) and CTO (IBM India/South Asia), said.

She added that tools like quantum, artificial intelligence (AI), powered by Cloud are available to make this vision a reality. IBM Research - India is developing a suite of AI applications for food (farm to fork) and manufacturing supply chains focussed on optimising the utilisation of resources and maximising productivity while being sensitive to their environmental impact (greenhouse gas emissions). It is developing algorithms to enable intelligent, self-correcting climate-aware supply chains for the retail and fashion industries for an enhanced demand forecasting and to optimise inventory, order management, and making supplier relationships sustainable. She added that the organisation is also extending its efforts into food supply chains by building AI to help with climate resilience enabling sustainable procurement and responsible carbon tagging of consumer products. "We are also developing technology to make hybrid cloud more carbon-aware and responsible from the workload to the data centre level," she said.

The '5 in 5' predictions said in the next five years, the goal is to make CO2 capture and reuse efficient enough to scale globally so that the level of the harmful CO2 in the atmosphere can be significantly reduced, thus slowing climate change. IBM also intends to come up with an innovative solution to enable nitrogen fixation at a sustainable scale and help feed the world's rapidly growing population. By replicating nature's ability to convert nitrogen in the soil into nitrate-rich fertiliser, feeding the growing population will be possible while reducing the environmental impact of fertilisers, it said.

In the next five years, IBM also aims to help facilitate the generation of treatments to aid physicians and front-line workers in combating novel, life-threatening viruses on a larger scale than is currently possible. A combination of AI, analytics and data can potentially help with the rapid analysis of real-world medical evidence to suggest new candidates for drug repurposing and speed clinical trials, it said. In the future, these tools may reach widespread adoption across industries, effectively becoming one of the means of rapidly responding to global, life-threatening viruses, it added.

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