Team

Principal Investigator

Prof. Philippe Schwaller

Philippe Schwaller joined EPFL in February 2022 and leads the Laboratory of Artificial Chemical Intelligence. LIAC develops artificial intelligence for chemical reasoning, synthesis planning, molecular and materials discovery, and experimental optimization. Philippe is also a core PI of NCCR Catalysis.

• Five years at IBM Research Zürich with Dr. Teodoro Laino
• PhD in Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, University of Bern, 2021
• MPhil in Physics, University of Cambridge, 2019
• BSc and MSc in Materials Science and Engineering, EPFL

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Postdoctoral Researchers

NoteDr. Matthew Hart

• Since September 2025

Dr. Ka Lok (Jacky) Chan

• Since September 2025
• Based in Singapore
• CARES SM3 project

NoteDr. Maarten R. Dobbelaere

• Since August 2026

Dr. Tom Frömbgen

• Since September 2026

NoteDr. Gianin Thomann

• Since September 2026
• With Spiez Laboratory

Administrative Assistant

NoteAnnick Delmonaco

The amazing person who makes sure that everything runs smoothly –

PhD Students

Junwu Chen

• Since August 2022

Víctor Sabanza Gil

• Since October 2022
• Co-supervised by Prof. Jeremy Luterbacher

Paulo Neves

• Since January 2023
• External PhD with Janssen Pharmaceuticals

Rebecca M. Neeser

• Since April 2023
• Co-supervised by Prof. Bruno Correia

Sarina N. Kopf

• Since August 2023
• Co-supervised by Prof. Cristina Nevado

Daniel P. Armstrong

• Since September 2023

Wing Pong (Joshua) Sin

• Since October 2023
• External PhD with Roche

Sandro Agostini

• Since March 2024
• External PhD with IBM Research

Théo A. Neukomm

• Since September 2024

Salomé M. A. Guilbert

• Since October 2024
• Co-supervised by Prof. Ursula Röthlisberger

Amin Mansouri

• Since April 2025
• Co-supervised by Prof. Caglar Gulcehre

Bohdan Naida

• Since September 2025

Cassandra Masschelein

• Since September 2025

Vu Nguyen

• Since October 2025

Rémi Schlama

• Since October 2025

NoteDavid Ming Segura

• Since February 2026

Anna Kelmanson

• Since February 2026

NoteSaumya Thakur

• Since February 2026

NoteThibaud Southiratn

• Since March 2026
• External PhD with AstraZeneca

NoteSusanna Di Vita

• Since June 2026
• External PhD with SecureCell

NoteGabriel Gibberd

• Since June 2026

NoteAnabel Yong

• Since August 2026

Visiting PhD Students

NoteTaddäus Strunden

• Since July 2026
• ETH Zürich

NoteLuca Ruvo

• Since September 2026
• Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO)

Research Engineers

Jeremy Goumaz

• Shared with Prof. Maria Brbić

Interns

NoteAurélie Bechinger

NoteDiane Tambey

NoteArtiom Hrynov

NoteDuc Dat Dang

NoteOctavian Susanu

NoteLouis Vasseur

NoteGabrielė Strodomskytė

NoteMarc Al Hachem

Alumni

PhD Students

• Dr. Bojana Ranković, March 2022–August 2026 — ETH AI Center Postdoctoral Fellow. Thesis: Language, Likelihood, and the Laboratory: Aligning Language Models with Bayesian Optimization for Experimental Discovery
• Dr. Oliver Schilter, external PhD with IBM Research, April 2022–June 2025 — Senior AI Engineer at Sphere Energy. Thesis: Integrating AI across the Discovery Cycle — Advancing Sustainable Chemistry through Digital Methods
• Dr. Andres M. Bran, August 2022–June 2026 — Cofounder and CTO of b-12 labs (Y Combinator). Thesis: Chemistry in Context: Applications of Large Language Models to Synthetic Organic Chemistry and Catalysis
• Dr. Jeff Guo, September 2022–December 2025 — Research Scientist at Isomorphic Labs. Thesis: Language-based Sample-efficient and Synthesizable Molecular Generative Design

Postdoctoral Researchers & Fellows

• Dr. Stéphane d’Ascoli, March–October 2023 — Research Scientist at Meta
• Dr. Geemi Wellawatte, August 2023–August 2024 — now at Lila Sciences; previously Academic Coordinator at FutureHouse
• Dr. Zlatko Jončev, September 2023–August 2025 — Cofounder and CEO of b-12 labs (Y Combinator)
• Dr. Marta Brucka, April–September 2024 — Application Scientist at Enantios
• Dr. Edvin Fako, February 2025–January 2026 — Elemynt
• Dr. Julian Götz, February 2025–March 2026 — OnePot
• Dr. Sergey Pozdnyakov, February–December 2025 — Postdoc at Microsoft
• Dr. Jan Rittig, June 2025–May 2026 — Cofounder of aChEntic

Visiting Doctoral Students

• Matthew Hart — University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Juliette Fenogli — ENS–PSL
• Rostislav Fedorov — Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS)
• Matt Ball — University of Strasbourg
• Eric Alcaide — Università della Svizzera italiana (USI)
• Oliver Loveday — Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ)
• Nicholas Runcie — University of Oxford
• Ryo Kuroki — Asahi Kasei

Visiting Postdoctoral Researchers

• Dr. Maarten R. Dobbelaere — Ghent University, before joining LIAC as a postdoc
• Dr. Adem R. N. Aouichaoui — Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

Master’s Theses

Master’s theses listing an external institution were carried out under Prof. Schwaller’s supervision at EPFL, with the degree awarded by the student’s home institution.

2025/26 (4 theses)

• Tim Arni — Mila
• Miquel Angel Perez Puigdomenech — EPFL
• Luca Rota — ETH Zurich
• Milena Charlotte Wiegand — Technical University of Munich

2024/25 (4 theses)

• Cesar Antonio Doñez Miranda — Empa
• Rémi Michel Maxime Schlama — ETH Zurich
• David Ming Segura — EPFL
• Yunjie Xu — ETH Zurich

2023/24 (3 theses)

• Lucien Michel Gérard Brey — MIT
• Amin Abdelrafour Debabeche — MIT
• Théo Alain Neukomm — Carnegie Mellon University

2022/23 (2 theses)

• Cheng-Hua Huang — EPFL
• Artur Andrzej Stefaniuk — EPFL

Master Semester Projects (EPFL)

2025/26 (10 projects)

• Sathvik Bhagavan
• Malo Gfeller
• Zeineb Mellouli
• Cédric Nathanaël Rossboth
• Octavian Susanu
• Matéo Tatzber — two projects
• Anthony David Verhoeven
• Nicholas Jeffrey Weiss
• Zongmin Zhang

2024/25 (7 projects)

• Arne Beckmann — two projects
• Ziad El Malki
• Aleksei Kudrinskii
• Guillaume Romain Galaad Malherbe
• Marko Simic
• Ines Bouchama

2023/24 (7 projects)

• Jenestin Anton Anthonipillai
• Ziad El Malki
• Tugdual Marc-Emmanuel Pierre Marie Kerjan
• Colleen Rachèle Lonfat
• Théo Alain Neukomm
• Rémi Michel Maxime Schlama — two projects

2022/23 (3 projects)

• Lucien Michel Gérard Brey
• Malte Franke
• Théo Alain Neukomm

Visiting Project Students

2022–26 (20 projects)

• Xu Huang — Shanghai Jiao Tong University; now PhD student at UC Berkeley
• Tanya Gupta — IIT Delhi; now Associate at Strategy&
• Anna Kelmanson — TCCM; now PhD student at EPFL
• Anna Kapeliukha — Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv; now Head of AI & Cheminformatics at Chemspace
• Franziska Weissbach — Technical University of Berlin; now PhD student at ETH Zürich
• Melih Gökay Yiğit — Middle East Technical University
• Shaipranesh Sentilkumar — BITS Pilani; now PhD student at Mila
• Huixuan Guo — Nanyang Technological University; now PhD student at MIT
• Yedong Xie — University of Science and Technology of China
• Ximena Leyva Peralta — Yale University
• Yifan Du — Zhejiang University; now PhD student at UCLA
• Magdalena Lederbauer — ETH Zürich; now PhD student at MIT
• Sacha Raffaud — Imperial College London
• Manuel Ott — ETH Zürich
• Orkhan Abdullayev — University of Strasbourg
• Duc Dat Dang — VinUniversity
• Diogo Torres — NOVA University Lisbon
• Alexandre Lohest — University of Strasbourg
• Jonathan Tubb — Stanford University
• Alex Oarga — University of Barcelona

Other Former Interns

• Nichelle Sequeira, Victoire Lang, and Peri Yerlikaya.