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 and NCCR Separations.
- 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
Administrative Assistant
Postdoctoral Researchers
Dr. Matthew Hart
- Since September 2025
Dr. Ka Lok (Jacky) Chan
- Since September 2025
- Based in Singapore, CARES SM3 project
Dr. Maarten R. Dobbelaere
- Since August 2026
Dr. Tom Frömbgen
- Since September 2026
Dr. Gianin Thomann
- Since September 2026
- With Spiez Laboratory
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
David Ming Segura
- Since February 2026
Anna Kelmanson
- Since February 2026
Saumya Thakur
- Since February 2026
Thibaud Southiratn
- Since March 2026
- External PhD with AstraZeneca
Gabriel Gibberd
- Since June 2026
Anabel Yong
- Since August 2026
Research Engineers
Jeremy Goumaz
- Shared with Prof. Maria Brbić
Visiting PhD Students
Interns
Alumni
Postdoctoral Researchers
- 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
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
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)
Visiting PhD 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
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.