Paradigm Shift: The Promise of Deep Learning in Molecular Systems Engineering and Design

• Main Authors: Abdulelah S. Alshehri, Fengqi You
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-01
• Series: Frontiers in Chemical Engineering
• Subjects: computational design; molecular design; synthesis planning; deep learning; product design; systems engineering
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fceng.2021.700717/full

The application of deep learning to a diverse array of research problems has accelerated progress across many fields, bringing conventional paradigms to a new intelligent era. Just as the roles of instrumentation in the old chemical revolutions, we reinforce the necessity for integrating deep learning in molecular systems engineering and design as a transformative catalyst towards the next chemical revolution. To meet such research needs, we summarize advances and progress across several key elements of molecular systems: molecular representation, property estimation, representation learning, and synthesis planning. We further spotlight recent advances and promising directions for several deep learning architectures, methods, and optimization platforms. Our perspective is of interest to both computational and experimental researchers as it aims to chart a path forward for cross-disciplinary collaborations on synthesizing knowledge from available chemical data and guiding experimental efforts.