ML Hackathon: Polymer Property Prediction

Overview Amalgam is the annual technical festival hosted by the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT Madras, popularly known as the “Material Festival.” The event provides a platform for students and enthusiasts to showcase their technical knowledge, creativity, and problem-solving skills through a diverse range of competitions, workshops, lectures, and engaging activities. Alongside its technical events, Amalgam also celebrates culture and diversity through a variety of cultural events. This year, Amalgam is proud to introduce a National Symposium, bringing together eminent speakers and experts from IISc, IITs, leading industries, and government organisations to foster meaningful discussions and exchange of ideas in the field of materials science and engineering. Uncover the Secrets of Polymers with Machine Learning Can your machine learning model uncover the hidden secrets of polymers? Polymers play a crucial role in modern society, finding applications across healthcare, electronics, energy storage, transportation, packaging, and sustainable manufacturing. The discovery of advanced polymers, however, requires significant time and experimentation. This competition challenges you to leverage the power of Machine Learning and Materials Science to accelerate this process. Participants will work with polymer chemical structures represented as SMILES strings and build predictive models to forecast important polymer properties. The challenge focuses on predicting two key properties: Glass Transition Temperature (Tg) — an important indicator of a polymer's thermal and mechanical behaviour. Chain Band Gap (Egc) — a property associated with the electronic performance of polymers. Your task is to develop a model capable of accurately predicting these properties for previously unseen polymer structures. Through this challenge, participants will explore how data-driven approaches can complement traditional materials research and accelerate the discovery of high-performance, sustainable, and biocompatible materials. Prizes & Recognition 1st Place: Cash Prize 2nd Place: Cash Prize 3rd Place: Cash Prize Total Prize Pool: ₹10,000 Cash prizes will be awarded to the top three participants/teams based on their final performance in the competition. Participation Certificate: Every participant who successfully participates in the competition will receive a Certificate of Participation from Amalgam, IIT Madras. Whether you are a student of Materials Science, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, this is an opportunity to apply your skills to a real-world materials discovery problem and compete with talented participants from across the country. Think. Model. Predict. Discover the polymers of tomorrow.