UCLA Materials Scientist Daniel Schwalbe-Koda Wins Second Collaborative AI Innovation Award
UCLA Samueli
Established in 2024, the three-year Scialog Automating Chemical Laboratories initiative supports collaborative research into scaled automation and AI-assisted research in chemical and biological laboratories. The effort is led by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) based in Tucson, Arizona, and co-sponsored by the Arnold & Mabel Beckman Foundation, the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation and the Walder Foundation. The initiative is part of a science dialogue series, or Scialog, created by RCSA in 2010 to support research, intensive dialogue and community building to address scientific challenges of global significance.
Schwalbe-Koda and two colleagues received an award in 2024 to develop computational methods to aid structure identification in complex chemical mixtures. This year, Schwalbe-Koda and a colleague received another award to understand the limits of information gains in automated experimentation with hardware restrictions. Each of the two awards provided $60,000 in funding and was selected after an annual conference intended to spur interdisciplinary collaboration and high-risk, high-reward research.
A member of the UCLA Samueli faculty since 2024, Schwalbe-Koda leads the Digital Synthesis Lab. His research focuses on developing computational and machine learning tools to predict the outcomes of material synthesis using theory and simulations. His other honors include a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award in 2024, recognition on Forbes’ 2023 30 Under 30 list in science and a fellowship from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2022.
Previous UCLA Samueli faculty who have received Scialog awards include current chemical and biomolecular engineering associate professors Yuzhang Li in 2024 and Carlos Morales-Guio in 2021.