Alexei Lapkin
Prof. Dr. Alexei Lapkin
Session: Chemical-Biological (Re-)Synthesis
Title: (Bio)Chemical Process
Development aided by Robotics
and Machine Learning
Alexei Lapkin graduated with an MChem from Novosibirsk State University, specialising in membrane gas separation. He then worked at Boreskov Institute of Catalysis prior to moving to the University of Bath where he was employed as a research officer, which allowed him to complete his PhD in the area of multiphase membrane catalysis. In 1997 he worked as a junior scientist at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Bath, and from 2000 until 2009 he acted as a research officer there. From 2009 until 2013 he was appointed as lecturer at the School of Engineering, University of Warwick. In 2013 he became Professor of Sustainable Reaction Engineering at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge.
(Bio)Chemical Process Development aided by Robotics and Machine Learning
In this talk I’ll describe the concept of a fully digital (bio)chemical R&D platform and how access to new tools is rapidly transforming the nature of R&D in molecular sciences. I’ll discuss concepts of molecular and reaction parameterisation that enable transfer of molecular R&D into the domain of mathematics, sometime avoiding, and sometime enhancing the classical physics-based computational methods. Specifically, I’ll present the concept of representing reaction data as a graph and using network optimisation for developing synthetic strategies. Once a route has been identified, individual reaction predictions and optimisation can be facilitated by ML algorithms and chemical robotic experiments. Finally, time permitting, I’ll introduce the application of reinforcement learning to identification of optimal process options.