Ekaterina Skorb's team is engaged in a new scientific field – infochemistry. This area affects everything related to the encoding, storage and processing of information at the molecular level. Throughout the week, employees of St. Petersburg ITMO University will get acquainted with the activities of the Center for High-Tech Instrumentation of the Southern Federal University and take part in research on a joint project.

As part of the introductory day, the scientists got acquainted with the laboratories and projects carried out at the MII and the Central Research Institute of the Southern Federal University. Then Ekaterina Skorb presented the activities of her research group at the seminar. The aim of her research school is to create platforms for the collection, aggregation, intelligent analysis and predictive modeling of the behavior of complex chemical systems. According to her, the main task of infochemistry today is to gather under one umbrella the areas at the junction of chemistry and information technology: chemoinfomatics, chemotronics, chemometrics, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in chemistry, robotization of chemical technologies, etc.

Examples of the ITMO team's work include the use of polyelectrolyte-based hydrogel structures to collect databases of volt-ampere characteristics for training neural networks, transmitting information from the course of a chemical reaction to create mechanically activated devices, predicting reactions in a polyelectrolyte environment and organic oscillators. In addition, scientists use the method with training on the data of the sonochemical platform to analyze the composition of liquids, topological analysis of sonochemical nanostructured surfaces and functional microparticles, and create databases on screening molecules and substances for biomedical applications. Infochemistry methods are actively expanding, including data collection projects in robotic laboratories and using citizen science. These areas have shown their relevance for scientific and technological development, including the use of artificial intelligence in industry.

Already, the teams of SFedU and ITMO are starting to conduct joint research within the framework of the project "Full-cycle technologies for the express development of functional materials under the control of artificial intelligence" of the Priority 2030 program of SFedU (national project "Science and Universities) and FNTP "Development of Synchrotron and Neutron Research". As part of the project implementation, at the first stage, the team plans to combine the entire complex of equipment of the Center for High-tech Instrumentation into one network controlled using artificial intelligence technologies.