Zeta Alpha at Lab of the Future Europe 2025

On 30 September and 1 October, the Zeta Alpha team visited the Lab of the Future Europe 2025 at Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, a beautiful historic venue in the city center. The event brought together 500+ life science leaders, 90+ expert speakers, and 35 sessions across 8 tracks. The organizers described it as one of their most ambitious editions yet, with AI-focused sessions drawing strong engagement from both R&D and vendors in the pharma and biotech space. The big guys, like AstraZeneca, GSK, Roche, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk as well as the AI centric innovators like Recursion, Isomorphic Labs, and Insilico Medicine were all there.

Our goal was to see how the industry is evolving, especially around AI, as well as to connect with R&D and research leaders in the field. Sessions explored AI and digital transformation, connected and automated labs, operational excellence, data strategy, and more. Particularly fascinating is the application of AI in labs: robots adjusting experiments in real time (e.g., autonomously altering variables like temperature based on live readings), and vision models monitoring labs via live video. Some of our highlights from the keynotes were "Co-Working with Intelligence: The Future of Lab Teams" by Jeremy Ward (Accenture), and "Advancing Drug Discovery: Unleashing the Power of AI, Machine Learning, and Data Innovation" by Patrick Collins (Recursion). It is amazing to see how much AI can accelerate not only the digital discovery process, but also the subsequent lab testing trajectory. Of course, the jury is still out on how AI designed drugs will actually impact the bottom line of pharma companies.

A recurring theme that received more focus than expected was AI adoption and trust. Scientists are far less forgiving of AI mistakes and often won’t give tools a second chance. Concerns about job loss from automation also raise questions. One especially popular talk, by a former Novo Nordisk VP, focused entirely on the behavioral science of adoption - exploring how companies can use subtle psychological strategies to encourage employees to embrace new systems. The framing was fascinating: approaches that could easily be seen as manipulation, but equally as clever methods of driving adoption.

Reflections & Next Steps There is a lot of potential in pharma where Zeta Alpha can accelerate discovery and research. Accurately searching through historical lab reports - and even automating writing them - seems like a strong starting point, especially since it’s not a chore that scientists enjoy. However, the unique nature of lab data must be considered. This data needs to be integrated into any knowledge management solution in this industry. 

A logical quick win is to start with integrating your AI platform with your existing ELN and LIMS providers, who already help R&D to collect, store, and manage lab results, and come with connectors built for lab hardware, but are often not at the forefront of the AI revolution. Zeta Alpha is happy to help you with that.