Two IIT Madras alumni have launched a $1 million prize challenge to solve five longstanding problems in materials science, with the aim of accelerating scientific discoveries using artificial intelligence.
Solving these problems could help researchers develop more efficient electronic devices, improve semiconductor manufacturing and advance energy-related technologies.
Advaith Sridhar and Akash Ramdas, who met more than a decade ago at IIT Madras, co-founded Discovered Materials, a San Francisco-based startup developing AI-powered methods to discover new materials for semiconductor chips, according to the company’s official website . The problems involve understanding cuprate superconductivity, predicting the electrical properties of semiconductor interfaces, and developing faster, more accurate methods for quantum chemistry calculations, according to Discovered Materials’ official challenge website .
Under the official competition rules , the largest prize, worth $400,000, is allocated to cuprate superconductivity. Two challenges offer $200,000 each, while the remaining two carry prizes of $100,000 each. The startup had previously raised $9 million in seed funding in August to advance its semiconductor materials research.
