Faraday Discussions meeting on Data-Driven Chemistry
The 342nd Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Faraday Discussions meeting took place in Oxford last week. The theme of the meeting was “Data-Driven Discovery in the Chemical Sciences”, making it the first dedicated Faraday Discussion to explore the rapidly-growing role of machine learning and artificial intelligence in chemical discovery.
The meeting was jointly chaired by Professors Volker Deringer and Fernanda Duarte, who both lead research groups at Oxford Chemistry. The “co-chair” arrangement reflects one of the key ideas behind the meeting: bringing together molecular (Fernanda) and materials (Volker) computational chemistry, and the role that data play in both.
The meeting was opened with the Spiers memorial lecture, given by Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik (University of Toronto), the director of the Acceleration Consortium. The closing remarks lecture was delivered by Professor Andrew Cooper FRS (University of Liverpool).
The meeting took place at Trinity College, Oxford, from 10 to 12 September 2024. Faraday Discussions papers are circulated before the event and discussed in depth at the meeting, allowing plenty of time for forward-looking discussions.
This event marked the 20th Faraday Discussion held in Oxford, and attracted a record attendance of over 150 delegates from around the world, including both industry and academia.
Oxford’s Professor Susan Perkin, Head of the RSC Faraday Standing Committee on Conferences, said:
This Faraday Discussion has been a huge success, connecting up researchers interested in a wide range of problems in the chemical sciences who share an interest in building new data-driven approaches. The lecture theatre was completely full and there was a real buzz in the room! Our thanks and congratulations to Volker and Fernanda.
The proceedings of the conference, including papers and records of the discussions, will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Faraday Discussions journal.
