Applications Open Now · Closes August 10

We make1 scientists and deep tech startups AI-native2.

Apply for Cohort 01
What does AI-native mean?

1 Reactorfield is a four-week program that accelerates R&D by embedding agents into scientific workflows.

2 Do less grunt work. Do more science. Delegate the reading, coding, and first-pass analysis to agents the way a PI delegates to grad students. Save your own hours for what counts: judgment, taste, and choosing the next experiment.

Supported by
01/Program

Reactorfield is a four-week program that accelerates R&D by embedding agents into scientific workflows.

Learn what frontier models can do, adopt the AI-native mindset, and build AI into your own research workflows.

Hypothesize

Sessions that show you what to automate.

01a

Speakers from AI companies

Operators and researchers from frontier AI labs and science-AI companies share the workflows they actually use and ship.

01b

1:1 support

1:1 sessions to guide you from choosing what to automate to unblocking broken agent loops.

Experiment

A stack and support to make it run in your lab.

02a

AI tools & skills library

An owned set of skills, hooks, loops, and prompts configured for scientific work. Yours to keep, extend, and adapt to your research.

02b

Partner support and perks

Deals, credits, and priority support from our science-AI partners, the same tools you'll use in your builds.

Publish

A weekly cadence that keeps momentum real.

03a

Weekly goals & demos

Set a goal each week, then present what changed: “I automated this.” Leave with a concrete next build, not a vague intention.

03b

Cross-inspiration sessions

Fellows present what they automated, so an idea from one lab becomes leverage for another.

Selective

Field deployments

Selected teams get hands-on AI deployment support in their own lab. A forward deployed engineer will come to your lab to wire AI directly into your workflows.

AI rewrote how software is built.
Science is next.

02/Who should join

Scientists and deep tech builders who are serious about what comes next.

Deep Tech Founders

You're building at the frontier of hard science.

The roadmap needs thirty people; you have three and a runway.

AI lets your three-person team research, prototype, and ship like thirty.

Academic Researcher

You run a lab, finish a PhD, or grind through a postdoc.

Publishing, collaborating, mentoring, and permanently behind on the literature.

AI compresses months of reading into days and hands busywork to agents.

Industry Scientist

You do science where it meets product: biotech, pharma, materials, climate.

Every experiment competes with deadlines, messy data, and impatient stakeholders.

AI takes you from experiment to defensible insight in days.

Join Cohort 1 Fellows From
03/Use cases

AI is the new computer. Every scientist will learn to use it.

The computer didn't belong to one kind of scientist. It became the ground everyone worked on. AI is that next layer: not a gadget or a productivity tool, but a tool that changes how research itself gets done. Explore the ways AI is already transforming how research happens.

Comprehensive literature synthesis, gap-finding & hypothesis generation
What it is

Read the entire published body of a field overnight and return a structured map of what is known, what is contradictory, and what is missing, then generate testable hypotheses and surface analogies across disciplinary silos.

With AI

Thousands of papers read overnight and returned as a structured gap map. Systematic screening and extraction done with agents running in parallel. Every unresolved contradiction in a subfield enumerated on demand, with analogies drawn across every field at once.

Materials & molecule discovery from fragmented literature
What it is

Extract quantitative property data from a fragmented, multilingual literature and propose specific candidate compositions, molecules, or genes, including underexplored options found by analogy across material and biological classes.

With AI

Property data extracted from full texts and underexplored composition spaces flagged in days. All published SAR for a drug target synthesized and ADMET liabilities predicted in hours. Candidate sorbents, catalysts, electrolytes, and resistance genes proposed by analogy.

Patent landscape & freedom-to-operate analysis
What it is

Read thousands of patents to map claim scope across whole portfolios, identify prior art and freedom-to-operate (FTO) gaps, and propose design-arounds for blocking patents.

With AI

Claim scope mapped across full portfolios in days, with design-arounds for blocking patents. Literature and patents mined together to map prior art, find FTO gaps, and propose novel candidates.

Biological & genetic design (proteins, pathways, edits, breeding)
What it is

Design biological systems, including protein and enzyme variants, metabolic pathways, genome-scale models, gene edits, and crop crosses, by synthesizing structural, mutagenesis, homolog, and field-trial data before any wet-lab work begins.

With AI

Position-specific protein mutability returned in hours. Pathway designs and enzyme efficiencies synthesized to route around competing drains. CRISPR guide design, off-target prediction, and regulatory class combined in one pass.

Multimodal experimental-data interpretation
What it is

Turn raw, high-volume measurement data (images, spectra, omics layers, sequences, and free-text records) into scientific conclusions, read against literature benchmarks.

With AI

Imaging scored at scale by vision models and read against literature benchmarks. Pathway enrichment and hypotheses generated automatically from multi-omic data.

Specification-to-code generation
What it is

Turn plain-language specifications into working domain-specific code (hardware description, verification testbenches, bioinformatics pipelines, and robot control programs) so that non-programmers can produce it.

With AI

Whole register-transfer-level (RTL) modules scaffolded from plain-language specs. Testbench skeletons, assertions, and coverage models generated from plain-language test plans. RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) and single-cell pipelines generated, debugged, and documented.

Design-space exploration, optimization & trade studies
What it is

Interpret simulation or experiment results, propose the next parameters to try, and search large design or route spaces in a closed loop, so optimization runs faster than humans can iterate, and select the best option scored against full criteria.

With AI

Electronic-design-automation (EDA) reports interpreted and next parameters proposed, collapsing weeks of iteration into days. Experiment results read and the next experiment proposed in a closed loop, 24/7. Trade studies, dispatch, and route selection grounded in full precedent.

Root-cause diagnosis & predictive maintenance from operational data
What it is

Synthesize heterogeneous, multimodal operational data (sensor streams, logs, metrology, telemetry, maintenance history) against a knowledge base to rank root causes of failures and predict failures before they happen.

With AI

Statistical-process-control (SPC) data, tool logs, and maintenance history synthesized at once, with root causes in hours. Anomalies matched to fleet-wide failure signatures for remote diagnosis without a dispatch. Sensor health read against failure signatures to predict useful life and time maintenance exactly.

Proactive failure-mode, hazard & scale-up risk anticipation
What it is

Before an expensive run or design is committed, enumerate the ways it can fail (failure modes, hazards, scale-up pitfalls) by synthesizing analogous prior cases, and propose mitigations up front.

With AI

Failure modes and mitigations for analogous reactions synthesized to quantify risk before the first large run. FMEA drafts built from failure histories in hours, surfacing modes that bias usually hides.

Reviving siloed & legacy technical knowledge
What it is

Make decades of fragmented, multilingual, classified, half-digitized, or about-to-retire engineering knowledge fully queryable, especially multi-decade materials-qualification archives, and identify the gaps systematically.

With AI

Multilingual, multi-decade data synthesized in full. Qualification gaps identified systematically. Make retiring expertise permanently queryable.

Automated compliance checking, traceability & continuous monitoring
What it is

Continuously check artifacts and data streams against rulebooks, specifications, and acceptance criteria (design rules, requirements, certificates, safety signals), flagging only the exceptions and turning periodic manual review into a live process.

With AI

Design-rule queries answered instantly and violations caught at schematic entry rather than sign-off. Traceability matrices built and kept current from spec documents, with changes propagated downstream. Certificate values extracted and compared to limits, flagging only exceptions. Adverse-event patterns synthesized continuously, turning quarterly review into a live process.

04/Manifesto

For centuries, scientific progress has been bound by the limits of human bandwidth, how many papers one person can read, how many hypotheses one mind can hold, how many experiments one team can run.

AI doesn't remove those limits. It multiplies the scientist behind them.

We built Reactorfield because we believe that the next generation of scientific breakthroughs won't just come from better models or bigger datasets. They'll come from researchers who know exactly how to put these tools to work, who treat AI not as a novelty, but as an indispensable member of their team.

This is a training ground for that scientist. For you.

05/Apply

Ready to move at the speed of what's possible?

Applications close August 10, 2026 · Program runs August 31 - September 28, 2026

06/FAQ
Who can apply?

Scientists, engineers, and researchers across domains: academic, industry, or builders. Teams are encouraged to apply together: the program is for the people doing the work, not only the person with the title.

How much time does it take?

It is a sprint, and it is meant to feel like one. Plan for live sessions plus serious build time on your own research every week for four weeks. Fellows who protect the hours get a transformed workflow; there is no passive version of this.

Is it remote or in person?

Hybrid. Live sessions run online throughout the program, with in-person components for the cohort. Field deployments, for selected teams, happen on-site in your lab.

Is there a program fee?

No. Reactorfield is non-dilutive and supported as a public-good initiative to accelerate science.

Do I need to be an AI expert?

No. You need depth in your own science and a willingness to rebuild how you work. We close the gap between what frontier models can do and how you use them. That is the whole point of the program.

What do I leave with?

A working, AI-native version of your own research workflow, running on your questions and your data, plus the judgment to keep it current as the tools change, and a cohort of peers across deep tech who share what works.

How are fellows selected?

We review every submission and follow up with short interviews for the strongest builders, usually one or two calls before a fast decision. We select for scientific depth, willingness to adapt AI-native mindset, and urgency to implement AI workflows that accelerate your science.

06/Team
JS James Sinka

James Sinka

Unicorn founder, YC W19, trained chemist. Previously built a deep-tech fellowship supported by founders of Varda, Astranis, and Solugen, that attracted talent from OpenAI, DeepMind, and SpaceX.

BO Berk Ozer

Berk Ozer

2x founder (YC S21) who shipped AI agents used by millions even before ChatGPT existed, then ran a VC/accelerator, investing in 150+ startups and helping them raise $100M+ in follow-on funding.