Bayesian Optimization For Materials Science

This book provides a short and concise introduction to Bayesian optimization specifically for experimental and computational materials scientists. After explaining the basic idea behind Bayesian optimization and some applications to materials science in Chapter 1, the mathematical theory of Bayesian optimization is outlined in Chapter 2. Finally, Chapter 3 discusses an application of Bayesian optimization to a complicated structure optimization problem in computational surface science.Bayesian optimization is a promising global optimization technique that originates in the field of machine learning and is starting to gain attention in materials science. For the purpose of materials design, Bayesian optimization can be used to predict new materials with novel properties without extensive screening of candidate materials. For the purpose of computational materials science, Bayesian optimization can be incorporated into first-principles calculations to perform efficient, global structure optimizations. While research in these directions has been reported in high-profile journals, until now there has been no textbook aimed specifically at materials scientists who wish to incorporate Bayesian optimization into their own research. This book will be accessible to researchers and students in materials science who have a basic background in calculus and linear algebra.

This book deals with an information-driven approach to plan materials discovery and design, iterative learning. The authors present contrasting but complementary approaches, such as those based on high throughput calculations, combinatorial experiments or data driven discovery, together with machine-learning methods. Similarly, statistical methods successfully applied in other fields, such as biosciences, are presented. The content spans from materials science to information science to reflect the cross-disciplinary nature of the field. A perspective is presented that offers a paradigm (codesign loop for materials design) to involve iteratively learning from experiments and calculations to develop materials with optimum properties. Such a loop requires the elements of incorporating domain materials knowledge, a database of descriptors (the genes), a surrogate or statistical model developed to predict a given property with uncertainties, performing adaptive experimental design to guide the next experiment or calculation and aspects of high throughput calculations as well as experiments. The book is about manufacturing with the aim to halving the time to discover and design new materials. Accelerating discovery relies on using large databases, computation, and mathematics in the material sciences in a manner similar to the way used to in the Human Genome Initiative. Novel approaches are therefore called to explore the enormous phase space presented by complex materials and processes. To achieve the desired performance gains, a predictive capability is needed to guide experiments and computations in the most fruitful directions by reducing not successful trials. Despite advances in computation and experimental techniques, generating vast arrays of data; without a clear way of linkage to models, the full value of data driven discovery cannot be realized. Hence, along with experimental, theoretical and computational materials science, we need to add a “fourth leg’’ to our toolkit to make the “Materials Genome'' a reality, the science of Materials Informatics.

Machine Learning for Materials Science provides the fundamentals and useful insight into where Machine Learning (ML) will have the greatest impact for the materials science researcher. This digital primer provides example methods for ML applied to experiments and simulations, including the early stages of building an ML solution for a materials science problem, concentrating on where and how to get data and some of the considerations when choosing an approach. The authors demonstrate how to build more robust models, how to make sure that your colleagues trust the results, and how to use ML to accelerate or augment simulations, by introducing methods in which ML can be applied to analyze and process experimental data. They also cover how to build integrated closed-loop experiments where ML is used to plan the course of a materials optimization experiment and how ML can be utilized in the discovery of materials on computers.

This volume brings together the main results in the field of Bayesian Optimization (BO), focusing on the last ten years and showing how, on the basic framework, new methods have been specialized to solve emerging problems from machine learning, artificial intelligence, and system optimization. It also analyzes the software resources available for BO and a few selected application areas. Some areas for which new results are shown include constrained optimization, safe optimization, and applied mathematics, specifically BO's use in solving difficult nonlinear mixed integer problems. The book will help bring readers to a full understanding of the basic Bayesian Optimization framework and gain an appreciation of its potential for emerging application areas. It will be of particular interest to the data science, computer science, optimization, and engineering communities.

Bayesian optimization is a methodology for optimizing expensive objective functions that has proven success in the sciences, engineering, and beyond. This timely text provides a self-contained and comprehensive introduction to the subject, starting from scratch and carefully developing all the key ideas along the way. This bottom-up approach illuminates unifying themes in the design of Bayesian optimization algorithms and builds a solid theoretical foundation for approaching novel situations. The core of the book is divided into three main parts, covering theoretical and practical aspects of Gaussian process modeling, the Bayesian approach to sequential decision making, and the realization and computation of practical and effective optimization policies. Following this foundational material, the book provides an overview of theoretical convergence results, a survey of notable extensions, a comprehensive history of Bayesian optimization, and an extensive annotated bibliography of applications.

This open access book brings out the state of the art on how informatics-based tools are used and expected to be used in nanomaterials research. There has been great progress in the area in which “big-data” generated by experiments or computations are fully utilized to accelerate discovery of new materials, key factors, and design rules. Data-intensive approaches play indispensable roles in advanced materials characterization. "Materials informatics" is the central paradigm in the new trend. "Nanoinformatics" is its essential subset, which focuses on nanostructures of materials such as surfaces, interfaces, dopants, and point defects, playing a critical role in determining materials properties. There have been significant advances in experimental and computational techniques to characterize individual atoms in nanostructures and to gain quantitative information. The collaboration of researchers in materials science and information science is growing actively and is creating a new trend in materials science and engineering.

Designing molecules and materials with desired properties is an important prerequisite for advancing technology in our modern societies. This requires both the ability to calculate accurate microscopic properties, such as energies, forces and electrostatic multipoles of specific configurations, as well as efficient sampling of potential energy surfaces to obtain corresponding macroscopic properties. Tools that can provide this are accurate first-principles calculations rooted in quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics, respectively. Unfortunately, they come at a high computational cost that prohibits calculations for large systems and long time-scales, thus presenting a severe bottleneck both for searching the vast chemical compound space and the stupendously many dynamical configurations that a molecule can assume. To overcome this challenge, recently there have been increased efforts to accelerate quantum simulations with machine learning (ML). This emerging interdisciplinary community encompasses chemists, material scientists, physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists, joining forces to contribute to the exciting hot topic of progressing machine learning and AI for molecules and materials. The book that has emerged from a series of workshops provides a snapshot of this rapidly developing field. It contains tutorial material explaining the relevant foundations needed in chemistry, physics as well as machine learning to give an easy starting point for interested readers. In addition, a number of research papers defining the current state-of-the-art are included. The book has five parts (Fundamentals, Incorporating Prior Knowledge, Deep Learning of Atomistic Representations, Atomistic Simulations and Discovery and Design), each prefaced by editorial commentary that puts the respective parts into a broader scientific context.