A British computer scientist has joined the University of Helsinki with an ambitious goal: creating artificial intelligence that could help researchers make Nobel Prize-winning discoveries.

Associate Professor Andrew Cropper, who joined the university’s Department of Computer Sciences and ELLIS Institute Finland in October, is developing AI systems that mimic the scientific method itself. Rather than simply identifying patterns in data, his systems form hypotheses, test them, and refine their understanding — very much like a human scientist would.

“Given examples of successful and unsuccessful drugs, rather than merely memorising patterns, it proposes a hypothesis to explain why certain drugs work, tests the hypothesis, learns from the outcome, and refines its understanding,” Cropper explained in the university’s news article.

What sets this approach apart is its use of logical reasoning to generate explanations that humans can read and question. The AI doesn’t just make predictions—it explains the reasoning behind them.

Cropper aims to apply this technology across multiple scientific disciplines, from genomics to ecology and pharmacology, anywhere the scientific method can be employed.

The researcher chose Helsinki for its world-class expertise in both logical reasoning and machine learning. “I am excited about bringing these communities together to tackle problems neither could solve alone,” he said.

Cropper is one of nine new principal investigators at ELLIS Institute Finland, established in 2025 as the second institute in the pan-European AI network of excellence. His wife is half-Finnish, and he spent three months at the university as a visiting researcher in 2023.