The work on the cases in the Design Laboratory of the Intellect Foundation was completed less than a week ago, and we are already ready to share our first successes.
Maxim Smirnov is a graduate student at the Moscow State University Faculty of Chemistry and a member of the Design Laboratory. Together with the team, he developed an AI platform for managing the R&D stages of new materials. Last week, he presented the team's design solution at the Russian qualifying stage of the fifth SCO Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, where he won first place and was highly appreciated by the commission.
We asked Maxim to tell us about his team's project, their work experience in the Design Laboratory, and the prospects for implementing a design solution in the industry.
– Maxim, please tell us more about your project: what task is it dedicated to, what practical problem does it help to solve?
– As part of the Intellect Foundation's Design Laboratory, our team has developed an AI platform for managing the R&D stages of new materials. Together with Glavstroy St. Petersburg and Transcomplete, a pilot solution is being prepared aimed at developing a service that allows you to predict the properties of concrete by composition and, conversely, generate optimal formulations of concrete mixtures for the desired characteristics. The platform is based on Bayesian models of artificial intelligence and neuroevolutionary algorithms that provide prediction of properties and generation of formulations with a small amount of training data. In addition, we have developed a number of application modules aimed at digitalizing processes within the production circuit: an electronic laboratory journal, a chat with an AI technologist, an automatic parser of scientific articles and patents.
The introduction of our service into operation will reduce the number of experiments during the full 28-day test cycle, reduce the overspending of raw materials and make it possible to automatically adapt the formulation to the actual quality of the components coming into production.
– Working on a real industrial case is usually accompanied by a large number of challenges, both technical and organizational. What difficulties did your team face during the project development process and what skills were you able to gain through your participation in the Project Laboratory?
The main technical difficulty turned out to be the lack of high–quality labeled data, a classic problem of research in the field of artificial intelligence. We solved it through a systematic literary search and working with data provided by our colleagues from the RBU of JSC Transcomplete. They also provided invaluable assistance in the initial experimental validation of the concrete formulations we generated.
At the organizational level, we are faced with another challenge: representatives of the academic field are used to working in a team in a different way than is customary in bigtech companies. Here I would like to note the great contribution of our mentor and later team member Roman Chupin, who organized the work on agile, introduced weekly sprints and ensured close cooperation with the business customer.
Previously, while working in the academic field, I did not think about the financial side of projects, but communication with business representatives taught me how to build financial models, estimate the market volume through TAM/SAM/SOM, evaluate the attractiveness of a project through IRR, NPV, PI, DPP and explain this logic to potential partners and investors.
– Your team won first place at the international conference: what do you think influenced the commission's decision?
I consider the commission's understanding of the importance of the project to be one of the success factors, since the construction industry in China, as well as in Russia, is one of the most important sectors of the economy. In addition, we have prepared a well-prepared presentation of the project, which includes a demonstration of the web service, a financial model and areas of cooperation with Chinese partners.
I also believe that my command of Chinese helped me convey to the representatives of the commission from the Chinese side the main points of our work, to be remembered by them and to give them confidence that at the final stage of the competition I will be able to present the project with dignity.
– Now the project has already received recognition and the industry is interested. Please share what further steps you see for the development of the solution: are there plans to finalize the product, pilot implementation or expand functionality in the near future?
In the near future, we plan to implement a pilot solution at the production facilities of RBU JSC Transcomplete and finalize the product based on feedback from the customer's team. We also plan to expand experimental validation to assess the limits of applicability of our approach and determine in which ranges of compositions and properties the model works reliably.
At the same time, we plan to defend the project at the finals of the Fifth SCO Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition in Qingdao, China, and participate in several acceleration and competitive programs. At the same time, we are exploring the possibility of adapting the developed technology for other industries, in particular, metallurgy and the agro-industrial sector.
– How did your participation in the Design Laboratory and work with industry representatives affect your professional development and future career plans? Has your idea of what you would like to do in the future changed?
Participation in the Design Laboratory helped me realize that I want to pursue projects that will find real-world application in a shorter time than in a purely academic environment. I saw how differently people in industry and science think – different planning horizons, quality metrics, and criteria for project success.
The experience of leading a team has given us an understanding of how to work in a team and how difficult it can be, and regular interaction with colleagues from the industry has taught us how to present a project in a way that is interesting and understandable to business people.
I would also like to mention working with China, which is an important area for me in which I want to develop further, as well as new acquaintances with other participants in the Project Laboratory, which may result in future joint projects.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Intellect Foundation for its financial support, as well as constant organizational and informational support, without which the implementation of our project would have been impossible.
The creation of the Design Laboratory became possible thanks to the support of the Oleg Deripaska Foundation "Volnoe Delo".
