Flaviu Cipcigan

Flaviu is a Staff Research Scientist at IBM Research Europe. His research focuses on AI for materials discovery.

Flaviu serves as a global technical leader in Climate and Sustainability, is a member of the Strategic Advisory Board of the Postgraduate Institute of Measurement Science at the National Physical Laboratory and supervises PhD students at the University of Edinburgh and University of Oxford.

Flaviu’s research has:

• Applied simulation and generative AI to discover new antimicrobial peptides that kill drug-resistant bacteria in mouse models.
• Designed the first antimicrobial peptides that make fractal pores in membranes using simulation and AI. The paper made a beautiful cover for ACS Nano.
• Demonstrated how AI can improve lead optimisation as a collaboration between STFC, IBM Research and AstraZeneca.
• Co-founded a 20+ member Global Shapers Hub in Manchester which delivered 3 community projects.
• Served on the Steering Committee for the SIAM Convening on Climate Change to advise on funding priorities for climate and sustainability.
• Developed an electronically coarse-grained model for water and used it to discover how the network of water molecules gives rise to water's anomalies.
• Created mathematical models for piezoelectric ceramics, used to inform the design of potential piezoelectric transistors.

Flaviu writes software in Python and uses the AI and data science stack. Flaviu received a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, working in collaboration with the National Physical Laboratory and IBM Research. His PhD was shortlisted for the Sam Edwards prize of the Institute of Physics.

His body of work led to multiple awards. His undergraduate work on quantum computing was shortlisted for the SET Student of the Year Award. His PhD was shortlisted for the Sam Edwards prize of the Institute of Physics. At IBM, he received 2 IBM Research Achievements, IBM’s 2021 Pat Goldberg award for best paper. Flaviu also appears on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.

In his free time, Flaviu dances and DJs Argentine tango on the North West England tango scene. He has integrated his interest in science and art by realising his PhD research research into physical form, a process documented in short film and a screening at the Edinburgh International Science Festival and writing physical representations of knowledge in a book chapter explores the lived experience of physics