Dear All,

You are most cordially invited to the First ICTP Colloquium on AI for Scientific Discovery by Sebastian Ehlert from Microsoft Research AI for Science.

The Colloquium will take place on Wednesday 14 October 2026 in the Euler-Lagrange Lecture Hall at ICTP at 11:00 hrs CET.  A coffee break will be served before the event, at 10:30 in the Leonardo Building entrance hall.

ICTP is launching a new series of colloquia dedicated to AI for scientific discovery that will explore how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming the way we approach fundamental scientific questions. The series will bring together leading researchers working at the intersection of AI and science, and highlight emerging methods, breakthroughs, and new opportunities for discovery across disciplines.

In this first colloquium, Sebastian Ehlert of Microsoft Research AI for Science will present research at the intersection of AI and the natural sciences, spanning materials discovery, molecular synthesis, biomolecular modelling, and electronic-structure theory. In particular, he will focus on Skala, a deep learning-based exchange-correlation functional that aims to make Density Functional Theory (DFT) systematically more accurate and predictive by learning directly from high-quality quantum-chemical data.

About the speaker
Sebastian Ehlert is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research AI for Science, working on machine-learning approaches to DFT and highly accurate quantum chemistry at scale. His research includes the development of the Skala functional and the Microsoft Research Accurate Chemistry Collection (MSR-ACC). He also contributes to the development of extended tight binding (xTB) methods and actively maintains open-source scientific software.
 
The event will be livetreamed at:
http://ictp.it/livestream

For info, please check the following link: https://indico.ictp.it/event/11539

Looking forward to your participation.

With best regards, 

Director's Office, ICTP