GEMSTONE kicks off in Austin

The GEMSTONE team gathered in Austin, Texas, on August 25–26, 2026, for the project’s kickoff meeting, hosted by Emerald Cloud Lab — the partner whose automated facility will run the experiments that the project’s standards and tools are built around.

Part of the GEMSTONE team, in lab coats and safety glasses, standing together on the automated laboratory floor at Emerald Cloud Lab in Austin, Texas. — Part of the GEMSTONE team on the laboratory floor at Emerald Cloud Lab in Austin, Texas.

Researchers from Stanford University, Purdue University, Morehouse College, and Emerald Cloud Lab met in person to plan the entire project and toured the floor of the programmable cloud laboratory where GEMSTONE’s protocols will run.

An Emerald Cloud Lab scientist demonstrates a station of sensor-capped reagent bottles to GEMSTONE team members wearing lab coats, safety glasses, and tour headsets on the automated laboratory floor. — During the tour, an Emerald Cloud Lab scientist demonstrates how sensor-capped vessels are monitored on the automated laboratory floor.

The GEMSTONE team seated around U-shaped tables with laptops during a planning session, facing a screen showing a slide titled 'The vision that we promised'. — A planning session during the kickoff meeting.