When Do I Get My Flying Car? Assessing The Potential Of AI To Revolutionize Separations Science
David Sholl
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been suggested as tools that will revolutionize many areas of science and society. I will discuss the potential and pitfalls for these methods in a key field within chemical engineering, namely separations science. Examples will include scanning collections of thousands of porous materials for adsorption-based separations of complex molecular mixtures, searching for high performance materials for Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide, and developing mixed matrix membranes for gas separations.
David Sholl is the Executive Director and Vice Provost of the University of Tennessee Oak Ridge Innovation Institute (UT-ORII), Director of the Transformational Decarbonization Initiative at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Editor-in-Chief of AIChE Journal. From 2022-2023 he was a Strategic Policy Advisor for DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. From 2013-2021 David was the School Chair of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. He has published over 400 papers and several books. David was on the Board of Directors of AIChE from 2019-2021 and in 2020 chaired the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Chemical Separations. In 2024 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.