The TRU is the social science lab of the Acceleration Consortium (AC), which is leading a transformative shift to accelerate materials discovery informed by ethics, economics, and Indigenous science and technology studies. The AC is a global community of academia, industry, and government that brings together artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, material sciences, and high-throughput chemistry to create self-driving laboratories (SDLs). These autonomous labs rapidly design materials and molecules needed for a sustainable, healthy, and resilient future, with applications ranging from renewable energy to drugs. A mandate of the AC is to ensure that all materials and technologies are ethically designed, create sustainable materials, and engage with community-based and Indigenous knowledges.

The TRU strives to ensure the ethical integration of Indigenous knowledges and values into research design for materials discovery. This includes proceeding with care and reciprocity, accounting for intergenerational impacts, and drawing on relational frames to undergird environmental sustainability. With the AC and its SDLs, we seek harm-reduction in the creation of new materials. 

Moreover, as part of our core work in Indigenous Science, Technology, and Environmental Studies, we ask and seek to answer: How do we define “ethical substance” and support justice-oriented materials discovery? How do we promote accessible and open-source materials discovery while averting the potential for weaponization? Moreover, how can we enact decolonial governance processes in relation to AI, SDLs, and the material sciences?

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The Ethical Substance Lab at the TRU is led by M. Murphy, Kristen Bos and Reena Shadaan.