Hector Santos-Villalobos

Assistant Professor Hector Santos-Villalobos was selected by the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute’s Science Alliance to receive a Support for Affiliated Research Teams (StART) award.

Santos-Villalobos is partnering with Oak Ridge National Laboratory senior researcher David Cullen on AURORA: Agentic Unified Reasoning for Orchestrated Research Autonomy in Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy. AURORA is an AI-driven framework designed to enable autonomous scientific experimentation and advanced microscopy workflows.

“Agentic AI workflows are transforming how we interact with the digital world. We’re bringing that same power directly to the laboratory bench,” Santos-Villalobos said. “Imagine a microscope that doesn’t just capture images, but thinks, adapts, and makes decisions in real time. That’s the future of microscopy science we’re building.”

Santos-Villalobos and Cullen will receive $100,000 from the StART program for their collaborative project. Santos-Villalobos was one of two UT faculty members to receive a StART award this year, joining Stephanie Kivlin, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Established in 2019, the StART program was created to stimulate new UT-ORNL research collaborations. Since its launch, the program has funded nearly 40 joint research projects totaling more than $5 million.

Contact

Rhiannon Potkey (rpotkey@utk.edu)