Four scientists from Diamond have been awarded the Materials Chemistry Horizon Prize for their work on accelerating data-driven chemical materials discovery.
The winning AI for Materials team includes Diamond’s Phil Chater, Francesco Carla, Chris Nicklin, and Jonathan Rawle.
The prize honours their exceptional work in developing chemistry-aware artificial intelligence software. The work includes applying this advanced technology to data-driven materials discovery and providing open-source materials databases and language models for the global scientific community.
The team from Diamond were very pleased to contribute to this project that involved a large multinational team. It has been a great collaborative effort to develop the use of artificial intelligence in materials discovery.
Chris Nicklin, Diamond’s Deputy Director of Physical Sciences
Diamond’s four winners were part of a team that includes AI-experts from Cambridge and US supercomputing specialists at Argonne National Laboratory, supported by researchers from around the globe. This included scientists from ISIS Neutron and Muon Source and the Research Complex at Harwell.
The team developed ChemDataExtractor, the first chemistry-aware text mining tool. The materials-domain-specific language software provides an interactive way for scientists to ask questions, similar to the ChatGPT model.
They were able to demonstrate data-driven materials discovery in less than one year, vastly reducing the average 20 year timeframe it usually takes industry to discover new material for a given application.
The resulting high-quality experimental databases and chemistry-specific language models will now help guide scientific decisions and speed up research. To mark their achievements, the team will receive a trophy, and each team member will be presented with a special individual token. Additionally, their remarkable work will be showcased in a special video.
Rea more on Diamond website