TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Enthought, a company powering digital transformation for science, today announced that Resonac, a Japanese functional chemical manufacturer, has expanded its adoption of Enthought's innovative Materials Informatics (MI) Acceleration Program, following remarkable success achieved through the program at Enthought’s Austin, Texas location in 2023. Integration of MI into R&D can dramatically accelerate novel material product development but requires deep education for the scientists responsible for its success. Enthought's MI program helps develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to maximize the use of data and deepen the knowledge and insights gleaned from it.
Under the mentorship of Enthought MI experts, Resonac researchers have gained not only cutting-edge machine learning and AI skills for modeling materials data, but also first-hand experience scoping projects, developing prototypes and presenting findings. The transformation was so profound that, in under one year, Resonac nearly doubled the number of participants that went through the unique immersion program. In 2024, the extended partnership will help Resonac further cultivate its scientists’ skills, as it plans to triple its original participant size.
“We are more than delighted with the results of our partnership with Enthought, and are eager to continue the momentum by offering the Materials Informatics Acceleration Program to more of our employees,” said Yoshishige Okuno, Fellow and Head of Research Center for Computational Science and Informatics at Resonac. “Learning alongside MI consulting scientists enhances our competitiveness and opens up our people to a new way of thinking that propels innovation forward at Resonac.”
At the heart of the MI methodology lies the capability to leverage AI and machine learning tools to create robust software applications and tackle real industrial challenges, transcending sole reliance on the principles of physics and chemistry. Enthought's deeply skilled MI technical team knows this methodology, and has been a major differentiator ensuring transformative results for Resonac’s participating scientists and engineers–so that they can ultimately introduce new products to the market quickly, through efficient lab decision-making.
Enthought has helped Resonac’s scientists fuel a variety of MI projects to date, including:
- An application that uses predictive models to help explore complex materials design space for specialty product development
- A special-purpose training dataset by using the latest natural language processing tools to extract polymer property data from academic literature
- A robust automated imaging inspection system for quality control monitoring using deep learning
- Machine learning-accelerated computational chemistry calculations
“Effectively implemented MI moves beyond applying a new technology or adopting a new platform–it transforms people, processes and technology. One goal of Enthought’s MI Acceleration Program is to do just that, and revolutionize the mindset of scientists. It has been satisfying to witness Resonac’s employees’ transformation and readiness to insert new approaches into their work, and we look forward to continuing to foster their success in the coming year,” said Mike Heiber, Ph.D., Director, Professional Services & Customer Success, Materials Informatics at Enthought.
Resonac scientists not only explored a broad range of MI technologies, they rapidly adopted more efficient and robust practices for MI project advancement, the benefits of which extended to scientists outside of the program. Several of the software tools developed have also had a broader impact and taken new life in adaptations to new related business challenges.
For more information about Enthought’s MI Acceleration program, please visit https://www.enthought.com/materials-science-chemistry/materials-informatics-acceleration-program/.
About Enthought
Enthought LLC powers digital transformation for science. Enthought’s deep technology and scientific expertise enable faster discovery and continuous innovation, building a digitally enabled workforce and arming them with analysis-ready scientific data to be catalysts of value creation in science and business. Enthought specializes in transforming organizations in the electronic, semiconductor, materials design, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, energy, and consumer goods markets. Enthought is headquartered in Austin, Texas; with operations in Tokyo, Japan; Cambridge, United Kingdom; and Zürich, Switzerland. For more information, visit www.enthought.com.
About Resonac
The Resonac Group is a group of chemical companies that produces and sells products related to semiconductor and electronic materials, mobility, innovation enabling materials, chemicals, etc. The Group has a wide variety of materials and advanced material technologies applicable to midstream to downstream of supply chains of various products. In January 2023, the Showa Denko Group and the Showa Denko Materials Group (former Hitachi Chemical Group) merged into the Resonac Group and made a start as a new corporate group. The new trade name “RESONAC” was created as a combination of two English words, namely, the word of “RESONATE” and “C” as the first letter of CHEMISTRY. As a “co-creative chemical company,” Resonac aims to continue growing and enhance its corporate value through co-creation. The Group recorded net sales of about 1,300 billion yen in 2023, and its overseas sales accounted for 53% of net sales. The Group has deployed production/sales bases in 22 countries and regions, and continues operating its business globally (as of February 2024). For details, please refer to our website. Resonac Holdings Corporation: https://www.resonac.com/jp
