UChicago PME Materials Seminar Series - Nicholas Jackson

AI-Driven Quantum Mechanical Design of Soft Materials

While the properties of soft materials are ultimately dictated by their electronic structure, exploiting this knowledge for the design of non-crystalline materials has long been a formidable computational challenge. I will define conceptual and practical barriers that limit quantum mechanical design in soft materials and discuss recent work aimed at removing these barriers. First, I will describe the development of electronic structure models that leverage AI to operate at coarse-grained resolutions, enabling electronic design in non-crystalline molecular solids and polymers. Second, I will discuss how AI-driven strategies, tightly coupled with experimentation, can tackle soft materials reactivity challenges outside of the purview of traditional theoretical and computational methods. These developments chart a path towards predictive soft materials engineering grounded in electronic structure and chemical reactivity.

Prof. Jackson is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at UIUC and leader of the AI for Materials Group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. He obtained his B.A. in Physics from Wesleyan University, followed by a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University, working with Prof. Mark Ratner and Prof. Lin Chen. He was subsequently a Named Fellow and Assistant Scientist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, working with Prof. Juan de Pablo. His group's work at the interface of AI, molecular modeling, and soft materials chemistry has received recognition from Kavli, DOE, Cottrell, Dreyfus, AIChE COMSEF, ACS OpenEye, ACS PRF, and 3M.

Hosted by: Professor Andrew Ferguson