Agentic Strategies for Integrative Materials Modeling to Connect Scales, Disciplines, and Modalities 

Abstract: For centuries, researchers have sought out ways to connect disparate areas of knowledge. While early scholars were often experts across fields, specialization took hold in recent centuries. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we can now explore relationships across areas (e.g., mechanics and biology) or even more disparate domains (e.g., science and art). However, many existing AI methods have limited capabilities when it comes to physical intuition and often hallucinate. We propose that the key to address challenges in conventional data-driven modeling is to blur the boundary between purely physics-based and purely data-driven modeling. To achieve this, we report the development of physics-inspired multimodal graph-based generative transformer models in a hierarchical multi-agent mixture-of-experts framework. The design of these models follows a bio-inspired approach where we re-use neural network structures repeatedly arranged in different patterns and utility, implementing a manifestation of the universality-diversity-principle that has been a powerful paradigm in bioinspired materials.  As for applications, this new generation of multiscale models allows us to mimic and improve upon natural processes by which materials evolve, and how they meet changing functional needs. Applied specifically to protein materials, the talk will cover case studies covering distinct scales, from silk, to collagen, to biomineralized materials, as well as applications to food and agriculture where materials design is critical to achieve performance targets.  

Bio: Markus J. Buehler is the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT. Professor Buehler pursues new modeling, design and manufacturing approaches for advanced biomaterials that offer greater resilience and a wide range of controllable properties from the nano- to the macroscale. He received many distinguished awards, including the Feynman Prize, the ASME Drucker Medal, the J.R. Rice Medal, and many others. Buehler is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.  

All seminars are held on Wednesdays from 12:00 noon-1:00 p.m. in the Bowen Hall Auditorium Room 222. A light lunch is provided at 11:30 a.m. in the Bowen Hall Atrium immediately prior to the seminar.