The project seeks to design and build a flexible robotic platform to automate incubation and processing of hundreds of mammalian cell cultures growing in shake flasks, with integrated cell growth and metabolite analysis. Shake flasks model larger scale bioreactors, have ample volume for frequent sampling for analysis and support process development and cell line stability studies. The goal is to ensure consistent, reproducible cell processing for high throughput bioprocess research. This would facilitate systematic, parallel investigation of multiple parameters influencing cell growth or productivity, e.g. media formulation or feed regime. "Smart" software would be developed to model the process and mimic the culture expert, and thus automatically decide how and when to process each individual culture e.g. subculture to a target cell count, or when to feed to maintain a set glucose level.