The NSF has renewed the Molecule Maker Lab Institute (MMLI) for an additional five years with a $15 million grant. MMLI is an AI Institute for Molecular Discovery, Synthesis Strategy, and Manufacturing MMLI led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. CS professors Heng Ji, leader, and Jiawei Han, leader and executive committee member, respectively, are working on the Thrust 1 team. CS professors Hao Peng, Ge Liu, and Tong Zhang all joined the Illinois contingent as principal investigators with the renewal.
Humin Zhao, Steven L. Miller Chair Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is director of the MMLI executive committee.
“Functional molecules such as drugs, chemicals, enzymes and materials play a critical role in addressing many grand challenges facing society today. However, the process of discovering and manufacturing such molecules has remained slow, expensive, and highly specialist-dependent. We have developed AI tools and generalizable, automated molecule-making systems that can overcome this challenge and enable the rapid discovery and synthesis of more functional molecules that benefit society,” Zhao told the Illinois News Bureau.
Illinois, Pennsylvania State University, and Rochester Institute of Technology are bringing leaders in AI and biological and chemical synthesis together at MMLI to collaboratively create frontier AI tools, dynamic open-access databases, and fast and broadly accessible small-molecule manufacturing and discovery.
(l to r) CS professors Heng Ji, Jiawei Han, Hao Peng, Ge Liu and Tong Zhang
Computer science (CS) professors from The Grainger College of Engineering Siebel School of Computing and Data Science Heng Ji, leader, and Jiawei Han, leader and executive committee member, respectively, are working on the Thrust 1 team. CS professors Hao Peng, Ge Liu, and Tong Zhang all joined the Illinois contingent as principal investigators with the renewal. Thrust 1 is focused on AI-enabled synthesis planning; "developing a platform of new AI tools that will solve chemistry problems – called AlphaSynthesis. One of these tools will be a new AI-enabled synthesis planning tool for molecule discovery and manufacturing to identify the most effective and automatable synthetic routes to explore both chemical and biological catalysts for the manufacture and discovery of new molecules."
The databases and knowledge bases curated by the team from multi-modal datasets and literature will be utilized by tools in the AlphaSynthesis platform for application problems in the other three thrusts.
Grainger Engineering Affiliations
Jiawei Han is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science and is affiliated with the Data Mining Research Group and Data and Information Systems Research Laboratory (DAIS). Jiawei Han holds the Michael Aiken Chair.
Heng Ji is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science and is affiliated with the electrical and computer engineering department and Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL).
Ge Liu is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science.
Hao Peng is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science.
Tong Zhang is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science.
Humin Zhao is an Illinois Grainger professor of chemical and biomechanical engineering. Humin Zhao holds the Steven L. Miller chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering.