Rhyan Barrett

Research Scientist | Machine Learning for Chemistry & Scientific AI | Equivariant Models, LLMs | IBM Research | PyTorch

Germany

About

I am a PhD candidate in Machine Learning for Quantum Chemistry, with a strong background in mathematics and hands-on experience building generative models, equivariant deep learning architectures, and large-scale ML pipelines for molecular simulation and discovery. My research focuses on applying modern machine learning methods to challenging problems in quantum chemistry, including excited-state modeling, reinforcement learning for molecular optimization, and invariant representations of potential energy surfaces. I have published in Nature Computational Science and The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, and have several additional works under review. I have industry research experience from IBM Research Zurich, where I worked on foundational models for chemistry, including fine-tuning large language models for tasks such as reaction prediction, retrosynthesis, and spectral interpretation, as well as exploring multi-GPU training strategies at scale. I bring strong software engineering skills (Python, PyTorch), experience working across academia and industry, and a practical mindset focused on turning theory into robust, usable tools. I am finishing my PhD in September and am actively exploring industry roles such as Research Scientist, Applied Scientist, or Research-oriented ML Engineer, particularly in scientific machine learning, AI for chemistry, or foundation models for science.

Experience

  • PHD Candidate at Leipzig University
    Oct 2022 - Present · 3 yrs 10 mos

    Machine Learning for Quantum Chemistry. Doctoral candidate supervised by Julia Westermayr at Leipzig University and co supervised by Klaus Robert Muller at TU Berlin

  • PHD Candidate at Technische Universität Berlin
    Oct 2022 - Present · 3 yrs 10 mos

    Machine Learning for Quantum Chemistry. Doctoral candidate supervised by Julia Westermayr at Leipzig University and co supervised by Klaus Robert Muller at TU Berlin

  • Machine Learning Researcher at IBM
    Oct 2025 - Jan 2026 · 4 mos

    Working on implementing GRPO fine-tuning strategies for LLMs in chemistry in the group of Teodoro Laino

  • Visiting Researcher at The University of British Columbia
    Jan 2024 - Apr 2024 · 4 mos

    Research stay with Professor Christoph Ortner working on parameterizations of conical intersections in potential energy surfaces

  • Machine Learning Researcher at University of Warwick
    Jul 2021 - Sep 2021 · 3 mos

    My team worked on a project to generate new stable optoelectric molecules given the excitation energies using generative learning methods. This will hopefully reduce the computational cost of these kind of calculations in the future.