‘Digital Chemistry Is the Cutting Edge of Science’
In 2024, a new track ‘Digital Chemistry and Artificial Intelligence Technologies’ will open within the Bachelor’s programme in Chemistry. This track will offer courses in digital engineering, multi-scale modelling, chemometrics, and chemoinformatics, as well as big data and artificial intelligence technologies. Specialists from HSE University, Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University will be among the lecturers.
Selection for the track will take place among first year students of the ‘Chemistry’ educational programme who have shown the best results in mastering the digital chemistry course materials ‘Information Technologies in Chemistry.’
The bachelor’s programme ‘Chemistry’ was launched at HSE University in 2019 with the support of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the aim of training highly qualified personnel for world-class research centres. The programme combines fundamental training in chemical, physical, and mathematical disciplines with the deep immersion in research project work using the laboratories of partner institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences. One significant outcome of this approach to learning was the impressive scientific results of the programme’s first graduates, who received their degrees in 2023: 21 graduates published 46 co-authored articles in international academic journals.
Practical training within the scope of the new track will be completed through written coursework in theoretical chemistry and by carrying out research projects on track subjects. The faculty has the computing power and material resources necessary for this work.
'Chemistry is the science of substance transformations. Artificial intelligence is the science of transforming data into the answer required, and ideally into scientific knowledge. Digital chemistry combines classical theoretical chemistry with the latest methodology in artificial intelligence in order to accelerate the creation of new materials and reactions, and to deepen our understanding of chemical processes.
To do this, it uses both the precise laws of quantum physics and physical chemistry, as well as huge amounts of available experimental data. The curriculum for the track “Digital Chemistry and Artificial Intelligence Technologies” is designed in such a way that students who complete it will have a detailed understanding of digital tools used to solve applied problems in the field of chemistry and materials science, and also have the opportunity to apply them to real problems during their studies.'
‘Digital chemistry today is in many ways still the cutting edge of science, marking the transition to a new paradigm for the creation of substances and materials, based on working with big data. At that, it is rapidly evolving, penetrating almost all areas of chemistry: organic and inorganic chemistry, catalysis, medicinal chemistry, analytical chemistry, and materials science. The number of problems that can be potentially solved using artificial intelligence technologies is increasing many times over. Opportunities emerge for predicting and optimising the properties of molecules, predicting the stability of new compounds, and modelling chemical reactions. It becomes possible to solve problems of targeted synthesis of substances and materials with specified properties. In the future, artificial intelligence technologies will be able to replace time-consuming quantum chemical computational methods with models of machine learning and big data processing in electron microscopy and mass spectrometry. For this reason, it is important for a modern chemistry student not only to understand the essence of chemical phenomena and processes, but to learn how to apply these methods. It does not matter whether we are talking about training future researchers in experimental chemistry, both fundamental and applied. Mastering digital competencies takes a bachelor’s degree graduate to a qualitatively new level, at which they will find more success on the labour market.'
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