An Introduction to AI for Chemical Engineers

What is AI and ML and what are basic ides behind building AI and ML models? Let's talk about the ideal gas law!

An introductory course designed for helping engineering and chemistry STEM students and industry professionals entering the data science, AI, and machine learning areas.

This course is appropriate for those with minimal prior exposure to the field of AI and interested to either enter or shift their career path to this field and related areas. We use the simplest concepts in chemical engineering and chemistry, mainly the famous ideal gas law! to go over and introduce various topics related to AI and ML. In each step, we use simple, relevant, and area-specific example (mostly ideal gas law!) to show how these concepts relate to real-world applications and systems in chemical engineering and chemistry fields.

Main topics covered in the course include:

• Exact definition of AI and ML and the important terminology of the field

• Main differences between different modeling approaches from purely data-driven models to mechanistic models

• Definition of loss function and importance of selecting an appropriate one,

• An introduction to artificial neural networks and deep learning

• Overview of vision and language models

• An introduction to cloud computing and its benefits.

The course concludes by going over several recommendations for taking the next steps necessary to continue your journey towards this dynamic, fast-growing, and exciting field.