Optimizing Life Sciences Agents in Real-Time using Reinforcement Learning

Generative AI agents in life sciences face a critical challenge: determining the optimal approach for diverse queries ranging from simple factoid questions to complex mechanistic reasoning. Traditional methods rely on fixed rules or expensive labeled training data, neither of which adapts to changing conditions or user preferences. We present a novel framework that combines AWS Strands Agents with Thompson Sampling contextual bandits to enable AI agents to learn optimal decision-making strategies from user feedback alone. Our system optimizes three key dimensions: generation strategy selection (direct vs. chain-of-thought), tool selection (literature search, drug databases, etc.), and domain routing (pharmacology, molecular biology, clinical specialists). Through empirical evaluation on life science queries, we demonstrate 15-30% improvement in user satisfaction compared to random baselines, with clear learning patterns emerging after 20-30 queries. Our approach requires no ground truth labels, adapts continuously to user preferences, and provides a principled solution to the exploration-exploitation dilemma in agentic AI systems.