arXiv Machine Learning

Benchmarking Compositional Generalisation for Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials

The paper introduces a benchmark to evaluate compositional generalisation in machine learning interatomic potentials. It comprises four tasks that test models on unseen molecules, designed so that learning underlying chemical principles should enable generalisation. Experiments show that current state‑of‑the‑art models struggle, with out‑of‑distribution errors often an order of magnitude higher than in‑distribution errors, even for foundation models pre‑trained on millions of molecules.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 1

ElemeNet: Multiscale Molecular Machine Learning with Uncertainty Quantification Across the Periodic Table

arXiv:2606. 30961v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Advances in deep learning architectures and representations have enabled ML-driven chemical property prediction, but state-of-the-art (SOTA) models have remained largely confined to independent codebases and lack support for diverse chemical species.

By Jacob W. Toney, Samir Darouich, Yiran Wang, Aaron G. Garrison, Johannes K\"astner, Heather J. Kulik
arXiv AI
Sep 17

BOOM: Benchmarking Out-Of-distribution Molecular Property Predictions of Machine Learning Models

BOOM is a new benchmark for evaluating out‑of‑distribution (OOD) molecular property predictions in machine learning. It provides chemically‑informed tests across common property prediction tasks and assesses over 150 model‑task combinations. The study shows that current models, including chemical foundation models, struggle to generalize OOD, with the best model still exhibiting three times higher error than in‑distribution predictions.

By Evan R. Antoniuk, Shehtab Zaman, Tal Ben-Nun, Peggy Li, James Diffenderfer, Busra Sahin, Obadiah Smolenski, Everett Grethel, Tim Hsu, Anna M. Hiszpanski, Kenneth Chiu, Bhavya Kailkhura, Brian Van Essen
arXiv AI
Oct 15

Can Machine Learning Potentials Be More Accurate Than the Methods They Are Trained On?

The article discusses how machine learning potentials (MLPs) can surpass the accuracy of the quantum‑chemical methods they are trained on by generalizing across a third space—different quantum‑chemical methods. It proposes the development of method‑transferable MLPs that predict properties at unseen methods, demonstrating that such models can outperform any of their training methods in both density‑functional and wavefunction‑based theories. The authors argue that pursuing accuracy beyond the training methods could enable universal MLPs to exceed single‑method models, influencing dataset construction and model evaluation to push chemical simulation limits.

By Pavlo O. Dral, Yi-Fan Hou, Yuxinxin Chen, Hassan Nawaz, Mateusz Witkowski, Szymon \'Smiga, Ireneusz Grabowski
arXiv Machine Learning
6d ago

Multitask learning with semiempirical orbital charges enables sample-efficient MLIPs

The paper presents a multitask learning approach that incorporates orbitally resolved semiempirical charges into machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs). By training with inexpensive GFN1‑xTB orbital charges, the model reduces energy mean absolute error by 58% compared to energy‑only baselines and needs five times less data to achieve similar performance. The method also outperforms or matches models using costly DFT charges and preserves inference efficiency, offering a scalable way to build accurate, data‑efficient foundation models for complex chemical systems.

By Ihor Neporozhnii, Sjoerd Hoogland, Oleksandr Voznyy
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 19

Evaluating Universal Machine Learning Force Fields Against Experimental Measurements

arXiv:2508. 05762v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Universal machine learning force fields (UMLFFs) promise to revolutionize materials science by enabling rapid atomistic simulations across the periodic table.

By Sajid Mannan, Vaibhav Bihani, Carmelo Gonzales, Kin Long Kelvin Lee, Nitya Nand Gosvami, Sayan Ranu, Santiago Miret, N M Anoop Krishnan
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5

MolE-RAG: Molecular Structure-Enhanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Chemistry

arXiv:2606. 05693v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have shown promise for molecular property prediction, but their ability to reason over chemical structures remains limited, as molecular representations such as SMILES differ substantially from the natural language on which LLMs are primarily trained.

By Joey Chan, Wonbin Kweon, Ashley Shin, Niharika Bhattacharjee, Pengcheng Jiang, Yue Guo, Jiawei Han