Organic chemist Manuela Oliverio was working on a new drug when he noticed that test results on mice weren’t consistent, because the molecule being administered was always different depending on the chemist who produced it. It occurred to him that automation and robotics could make the drug development process more predictable, and so he founded Katakem, one of the startups in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield 200.
With Katakem, Oliverio aims to develop what he calls a “robot chef” for chemists — a device that makes chemical reactions more consistently reproducible while accelerating the experimental process. He claims that the current prototype, dubbed OnePot, can collect data about chemical processes 150 …
