In the fields of medicine and pharmacology, drugs have historically been discovered either by identifying active ingredients from traditional remedies, or by serendipity, similar to how penicillin was discovered in 1928. But modern scientists have found an alternative method that makes the hunt for new pharmaceuticals quicker, cheaper and more effective. AI, or artificial intelligence, can be found in everything from chess-playing computers, to self-driving cars, to the maps application on your phone when it’s calculating directions. And AI has found a new home: discovering new drugs. It currently takes on average 10 years and over $2 billion to create a new drug and get it approved. LSU’s DeepDrug team expects its AI tool, eSynth, to reduce the time for preclinical drug discovery and testing from an average of three years to six to eight months.