Matter Made Labs
Strategic AI for Materials & Manufacturing Leaders
Get tangible business results in
R&D and Operations with AI
Schedule Strategy CallAI for the real world is challenging
Manufacturing excellence demands precision. Yet your AI initiatives likely deliver the opposite – vague promises, perpetual pilots, minimal impact.
This isn't a software implementation challenge; it's a fundamental translation failure between digital abstraction and material reality. The specialized knowledge to bridge this gap is rare. Without it, you face a constellation of expensive symptoms:
Perpetual Piloting Syndrome:
The graveyard of 'promising' AI projects grows yearly. Each begins with enthusiasm, demonstrates a limited proof-of-concept, then fails to scale to production complexity. The result: spent budgets with minimal operational improvement.
The Translation Gap:
The data experts do not understand the realities of physical systems. On the ground domain experts do not know how to think in data and algorithms. They miss each other.
Fall for the hype machine
Shiny new AI tools are sold with great promises, but fail to deliver. Vendors are overly attached to their platform/solution/framework. Sorting through the noise is increasingly difficult.
Data deluge:
Data scientists expect "clean data", and do not understand sensor drift, the context on a factory floor,
Change Management Ignored:
Without involving the people who would use the solution, the solution will feel forced. The right consideration for usability of a tool is critical. Many engineers are rightfully sceptical of AI capabilities.
The Matter Made Labs Approach: Pragmatic AI for reality
Implementing AI in materials and manufacturing isn't about algorithms alone. It requires bridging four domains simultaneously: the science of materials, the practicalities of scaled production, the capabilities of advanced algorithms, and the human element – all within the European regulatory
With a decade of experience in applying advanced AI on physical systems. I have trained in deep theoretical underpinnings at MIT, accelerated R&D for materials science for half a dozen multinational companies at Citrine Informatics, implemented autonomous solutions for large industrial systems, and build Copilots at Microsoft.
My solutions have saved €10 Million/year in waste, added €4 Million/year in throughput, accelerated time to market by years and saved thousands of hours per year in automating rote tasks.
- Scoping the right project. Identifying the scope of a project is a critical step that most underestimate. What has impactful ROI? What aligns with the business strategy? Do you have the right data for this? Is there a path to deployment? Finding the combination of technical talent, business accumen, and operational understanding is critical. After scoping over 100+ projects over the years, I can help you navigate this problem.
- Test from the ground up: The key bottleneck for good AI is not building good algorithms. Its knowing how well the algorithm is working. The standard tests here (test/train split cross validation) are often inadequate. Does the test do what we actually want to test for? (Leave one cluster out cross validation might make much more sense). Are people actually willing to use the solution?
- Incorporate domain knowledge: This is hard earned from extensive experience building physical systems understanding. Un-experienced AI experts do not know the right questions to ask to identify the right constraints. These need to be in the solution from the beginning.
- Having an experimenters mindset: Every project is stage-gated. We do not progress until we demonstrate that the risk/benefit is worth it. This means your investments are derisked, and there is a clear sense of progress as the project goes along. Feasibility study, prototype building, prototype testing, production deployment, maintenance.
About me
Triple master's degrees from MIT in Computer Science, Advanced Manufacturing, and in Technology Policy
Real implementations: Deployed dozens of AI solutions for Fortune 500 and FT Europe 500 companies. Delivered projects that automates 1000s of hours of work per year, €10 million/year in savings, €4 million/year in additional throughput, and more.
Cutting edge AI experience: Worked at the trailblazing first Citrine Informatics (the first materials informatics company), at Microsoft Copilot developing the first AI data scientists, and Microsoft Autonomous Systems - using AI to streamline manufacturing processing and operations.
Services
Strategic Opportunity Assessment & Roadmap (recommended start)
- Focus: Identify & prioritize highest-impact AI opportunities.
- Process: Comprehensive analysis via collaborative deep dives and data review, typically culminating in an actionable plan within 4-6 weeks.
- Ideal for: ?
- Deliverable: Clear roadmap detailing initiatives, expected ROI, timelines, resource needs, and technology choices (build/buy/partner).
Organizational AI Capability Development
- Focus: Uplevel your team's AI capabilities and literacy.
- Process: A series of targeted workshops for executives and for IC teams, best-practices and documentation, and plus ongoing support.
- Ideal for: you think your workforce
- Deliverable: A more AI-capable workforce.
Custom AI System implementation
- Focus: Deliver on an AI Project
- Examples: R&D acceleration with AI, optimizing digital twin solutions, Generative AI-driven automation
- Process: A gate-staged process that is tailor made for your circumstance. Scoping, feasibility, prototyping, testing, deployment, monitoring.
- Ideal for: you already know what project you need help for
- Deliverable: Variable. Anything from a comprehensive feasibility report to a fully implemented production solution.
Executive AI Advisory & Strategic Partnership
- Focus: Ongoing expert guidance to maximize the long-term value of your AI investments.
- Process: Regular strategic sessions reviewing progress, evaluating emerging tech, mitigating risks, and ensuring continuous alignment with business objectives.
- Deliverable: Continuous expert partnership and strategic oversight for your AI journey.
Case Studies
Challenge: A chemical manufacturer needed to fine tune the settings of the pipeline for each new material batch, with optimization taking 3 days while new batches arrived every 4-5 days.
Key Insights:
- An excellent simulation existed but was underutilized due to 30-120 minute run times
- Manual safety checks added a half-day delay
- Process experts were operating on intuition rather than systematic optimization
Implementation:
Developed an AI-powered simulation replica that ran in <0.1 seconds with 98% accuracy
Systematized 100+ safety checks into an automated verification system that experts could quickly approve
Created optimization algorithms that consistently outperformed manual tuning
Results:
€10M Annual Savings per plant through optimized production
99% Reduction in parameter optimization time (3 days → 20 minutes)
Zero Safety Incidents during the transition to AI-assisted parameter settings
Challenge: A specialty glass manufacturer had tested 340 formulations over 18 months with minimal progress. Their best formula achieved only 5 out of 12 mandatory properties.
Key Insights:
- Risk aversion had led to incremental experimentation that would never reach the required properties
- 20% of experiments were duplicates or near-duplicates.
- Scientists spent 10+ hours weekly on experiment design rather than execution.
Implementation:
- Created a novel visualization tool revealing that alternative substrate paths had higher potential
- Implemented active learning algorithms to systematically explore the parameter space
- Automated experiment tracking to eliminate duplication
Results:
Market-Ready Formula in 90 Days: Achieved all 12 mandatory properties
80% Reduction in experiment design time
Transformed R&D Strategy toward more ambitious material exploration
Challenge: A multinational polymer manufacturer needed to develop a fire-resistant polymer blend, with 30,000 potential candidates but capacity for only 3 experiments weekly.
Key Insights: While direct property prediction wasn't possible with available data, auxiliary correlations could be leveragedThe lead scientist spent 10+ hours weekly formatting data and running basic analysisPrevious approach focused on a promising but fundamentally limited chemical family
Implementation:
Developed multi-property prediction models using auxiliary data, improving accuracy from 10% to 85-95%
Automated data formatting and analysis, reducing scientist workload by 95% (5 hours per week -> 10 minutes)
Created visualization tools to compare candidate pathways systematically
Results:
2-Year Development Time Savings by redirecting efforts away from a fundamentally limited approach
4X Higher Predictive Accuracy for critical material properties
25% More Experiments Run through increased scientist productivity
Challenge: A multi-national food and beverage manufacturer needed to optimize their aging manufacturing line. If buffer lines were not used effectively machines would get starved or blocked.
Key Insights:
- The optimization algorithm was local; only looking at the nearest two machines.
- There is significant data in the error messages; knowing why a machine stalls lets you know whether its likely that it will run in 1 min or in 10 minutes.
Implementation:
- Created a simulation based on the data of their manufacturing plant
- Developed AI algorithms to steer the simulation-based manufacturing line
- Deployed the AI algorithm on the factory line after extensive testing
Results:
€4 Million additional throughput per year from one production line.
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