AI4Chemistry Researcher

This role is posted on behalf of Chemlex, a startup supported by SGInnovate.

Background

ChemLex, founded by an interdisciplinary team in 2022, focuses on the disruption of chemical synthesis via its proprietary end-to-end high-throughput fully-automated platform powered by AI algorithms. Compared to traditional chemical synthesis via manual operations, our robotic platform not only improves the efficiency of chemical synthesis but also reduces cost and provides significant ESG benefit via our quantitative green chemistry system.

Through this innovative platform ChemLex provides chemical synthesis services to global customers in the pharmaceutical, and other chemical industries.

We are seeking motivated scientists, engineers and support staff to help establish a new R\&D and production facility in Singapore which will house our fully-automated platform.

We want to hear from enthusiastic applicants who have an interest in AI and automation and are energised by the idea of working in a start-up environment.

Job scope

We are looking for an enthusiastic AI researcher with a strong background in physical chemistry to drive AI4Chemistry projects at our newly established research Headquarters in Singapore.

Leveraging ChemLex’s advanced AI tools and MLOps infrastructure, you will develop models that address core challenges in synthetic chemistry, e.g. solubility prediction, design of experiments (DoE), reactivity prediction and synthetic route planning. You will work as part of a dynamic, interdisciplinary team of organic chemists, mechanical engineers, fellow machine learning engineers, and DevOps specialists to build next-generation AI systems for our automated laboratory.

Key responsibilities

• Build and maintain end-to-end pipelines for data collection, data preparation, model training, model evaluation, deployment and monitoring.
• Solve optimization and designing problems in synthetic chemistry.
• Adapting physical chemical theories into a data-driven, deep learning framework to solve key problems in the pharmaceutical industry.
• Implement code, optimize performance, conduct testing, and ensure reliable maintenance.
• Produce clear, well-structured technical documentation.

Necessary qualifications and qualities

• Fast learner with a master’s degree or higher in chemical engineering, computational chemistry, computer science or related fields from a world-renowned institution, with three or more years of work experience.
• Strong programming skills, proficient in at least one mainstream programming language (Python, Java, C\+\+, etc.); comfortable working in Linux; proficient with Git or other version-control systems. Clean, readable, and well-structured code style is a must.
• Solid mathematical and physical chemistry foundations and good familiarity with core ideas of physical chemistry, especially solution theories.
• Familiar with common optimization algorithms and proficient in standard machine learning algorithms.
• Proficient in at least one major DL stack such as JAX or PyTorch.
• Demonstrated experience in machine learning projects or related work is required.
• Strong communication skills in English, with the ability to stay current with the latest research developments in relevant areas, and communicate research findings with the relevant community, both in conferences and scientific writing.
• Passionate about research, highly self-motivated, detail-oriented, responsible, and a strong team player.
• Good habits in writing clear and thorough technical documentation.
• Willingness to travel internationally for training and events (eg conferences).

Desirable

• Strong publication list in a relevant field.
• Prior experience deploying online learning systems in industry is preferred.
• Code examples for an open-sourced project or high-profile journal/conference papers are strong plus.
• Experience in NLP, RL, generative models, or graph neural networks is a strong plus.

Interested applicants may apply directly to DTC at: https://central.sginnovate.com/hub/marketplace/openings/a8f8de7c-338f-43d3-bc63-e4dbb75c265a