appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Ling Xin

A Stanford University-led team including two Chinese researchers said they built the first general-purpose biomedical AI agent capable of working alongside human scientists, taking on complex tasks that once required groups of specialists.
Jure Leskovec, a Stanford computer science professor who supervised the work, said the agent had been released as an open-source system with a web interface so that biologists could use it without writing code.
“We have over 10,000 scientists all over the world using the system for their everyday tasks,” Leskovec said on Tuesday.
In the journal Science this week, the researcher said the system, called Biomni, could turn a plain-language request into an entire research workflow – from searching databases and writing analysis code to finding disease-causing genes and even creating step-by-step lab instructions that scientists successfully followed in real experiments.


In one test, the virtual biologist was given hundreds of raw files collected from wearable devices and asked to look for biological patterns. It cleaned the data, ran the analysis and generated new hypotheses.
In another test, the AI agent analysed genetic data from developing human embryos and uncovered previously overlooked factors that may help control bone formation.
Kexin Huang, a PhD student in computer science at Stanford at the time of the work and an architect behind Biomni, said the team tested the system on more than 400 real-world research tasks and compared its performance with existing AI tools and human experts.
In one case, Biomni needed only 35 minutes to complete a complex biological data analysis that took a human expert three weeks.
“It reached expert-level accuracy while cutting the time to just minutes,” said Huang, who later co-founded Phylo, a San Francisco-based start-up that aims to make the AI system available to more researchers.
Yuanhao Qu, a cancer biology PhD student at Stanford at the time of the work and another main developer of Biomni, said he was also a user of the system, after spending years doing laboratory research himself.
One example was molecular cloning – the process of creating and replicating DNA constructs for experiments – a routine task that took Qu years to master and still consumed hours each time, he said.
When tested on such a task, Biomni “did the whole thing from end to end”, designing the experiment and producing a protocol that matched expert-level work in a fraction of the time.
“For me, Biomni is really changing the way biologists work,” said Qu, who is also a Phylo co-founder and originally from Beijing.
“Work that usually takes me hours now takes just minutes, so I can really spend my time on the science that actually needs a human.”
But Leskovec said the system was designed as a collaborator rather than a replacement for scientists, with humans still responsible for asking questions, judging results and deciding what directions to pursue.
“Biomni is a powerful tool, not a decision maker,” Leskovec added.
The researchers noted that Biomni still had major limitations, having only been tested on part of the biomedical field while continuing to struggle with tasks requiring deeper scientific judgment, original experimental ideas and complex reasoning.
Future versions of Biomni could become broader, smarter and more self-improving by learning from experience, incorporating more types of scientific data and continuously adding new research tools and knowledge, they said.


T. rex was warm-blooded and had body temperature close to ours, study finds

China uses 100,000 home-grown AI chips to build leading weather forecast system

Geologists find unexpectedly large water sources in Xinjiang beneath China’s largest desert

Chinese scientists build world’s smallest CT scanner, weighing just 6kg

Science

Meet Biomni: the free powerful biomed AI agent turning data into hypotheses

The Stanford University-led researchers say they built the first general-purpose biomedical AI agent capable of working alongside human scientists. Photo: EPA-EFE

Google DeepMind director Cao Liangliang makes a boomerang return to Hong Kong

Machine learning and computer vision expert Cao Liangliang says his appointment as chair professor of data science and artificial intelligence at PolyU is “a full-circle moment for me”. Photo: Handout

China weighs open-weight AI’s security risks against national tech innovation strategy: researchers

Person holding mobile phone with logo of Zhipu Huazhang Technology on screen in front of web page. The company recently marked a breakthrough with its GLM-5.2 model. Photo: Shutterstock Images

China records most new unicorn start-ups in 5 years as AI and robotics boom

A man stands next to a poster of a humanoid robot during the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing on June 25, 2026. Photo: AFP

Nobel-winning materials scientist Omar Yaghi joins China’s Tsinghua University from the US

Omar Yaghi receives the Nobel Prize in Stockholm in December. Photo: Getty Images

Omar Yaghi will lead a team working on AI materials chemistry at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Photo: Reuters

US must innovate faster to counter China’s tech rise, lawmakers told

An EngineAI robot demonstrates martial arts movements in Shenzhen, as China pushes to expand its robotics industry. Photo: Korea Times

Members of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce in Washington. Photo: Handout

Hyperscale data centres like this one under construction in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, are expected to play a growing role in AI development. Photo: Chicago Tribune/TNS

News

China

Stanford team that includes two Chinese among its main developers says system can turn a plain-language request into an entire research workflow


Stanford team that includes two Chinese among its main developers says system can turn a plain-language request into an entire research workflow.


Meet Biomni: the free powerful biomed AI agent turning data into hypotheses

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Stanford team that includes two Chinese among its main developers says system can turn a plain-language request into an entire research workflow

Stanford team that includes two Chinese among its main developers says system can turn a plain-language request into an entire research workflow