First dissertation defended as part of the PEPR DIADEM program: Congratulations to Aymar Tchagoue, who also won the Best Oral Presentation Award at EUPOC 2026
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The PEPR DIADEM is proud to celebrate a major milestone in its development with the defense of the first dissertation completed as part of the program.
On June 8, 2026, Aymar Tchagoue successfully defended his doctoral dissertation titled “Artificial Intelligence for Polymer Design: From Knowledge Modeling-Based Counterexample Analysis to Guided Molecular Generation,” conducted as part of the AMETHYST project, a collaboration between the Laboratory of Image Processing and Information Systems (LIRIS) and the Polymer Materials Engineering Laboratory (IMP).
This thesis fully exemplifies DIADEM’s mission: to accelerate the discovery and development of new materials through the integration of artificial intelligence and domain expertise.
Artificial Intelligence for the Design of Innovative Polymers
Aymar Tchagoue’s work falls within the emerging field of polymer computing and aims to push beyond the limitations of traditional approaches to materials design, which are often time-consuming and costly.
His research has led to the development of several innovative tools for:
- Automatically detect contradictions and inconsistencies in the scientific literature on polymers
- Improve the prediction of key properties such as the glass transition temperature (Tg)
- Generate new high-performance polyimide structures using reinforcement learning
- Integrate a synthesizability score (Syn-Score) that guides the generator toward experimentally feasible polyimide structures
These results demonstrate the potential of artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of advanced materials by combining knowledge-based modeling, prediction, molecular generation, and experimental expertise.
Conducted under the supervision of Jean-Marc Petit, Véronique Eglin, Sébastien Pruvost, Jannick Rumeau, and Jean-François Gérard, this dissertation is a prime example of the interdisciplinary collaborations fostered by the PEPR DIADEM.
International Recognition at EUPOC 2026
This success was further highlighted by a prestigious award received at the EUPOC 2026 international conference (European Symposium on Polymer Colloids), held in Bertinoro, Italy.
There, Aymar Tchagoue received the Best Oral Presentation Award from the European Polymer Federation for his presentation titled “Artificial Intelligence for Polymer Design: Multi-Score Reinforcement Learning for High-Tg Polyimide Discovery.”
This award recognizes the scientific excellence of his work as well as its innovative nature at the intersection of artificial intelligence and materials science. His presentation was part of the conference’s theme focused on the design of new polymers through the combination of high-throughput experimentation and artificial intelligence tools.
Congratulations!
The PEPR DIADEM extends its most sincere congratulations to Aymar Tchagoue on this first thesis defense within the program, as well as on this international recognition. These achievements highlight the quality of the work carried out within the DIADEM projects and the crucial role of interdisciplinarity in accelerating the discovery of the materials of the future.
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