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Hauptverfasser: Du, Yuanqi, Yu, Botao, Liu, Tianyu, Shen, Tony, Chen, Junwu, Rittig, Jan G., Sun, Kunyang, Zhang, Yikun, Krishnan, Aarti, Zhang, Yu, Rosen, Daniel, Pirone, Rosali, Song, Zhangde, Zhou, Bo, Masschelein, Cassandra, Wang, Yingze, Wang, Haorui, Jia, Haojun, Zhang, Chao, Zhao, Hongyu, Ester, Martin, Hacohen, Nir, Head-Gordon, Teresa, Gomes, Carla P., Sun, Huan, Duan, Chenru, Schwaller, Philippe, Jin, Wengong
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21782
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author Du, Yuanqi
Yu, Botao
Liu, Tianyu
Shen, Tony
Chen, Junwu
Rittig, Jan G.
Sun, Kunyang
Zhang, Yikun
Krishnan, Aarti
Zhang, Yu
Rosen, Daniel
Pirone, Rosali
Song, Zhangde
Zhou, Bo
Masschelein, Cassandra
Wang, Yingze
Wang, Haorui
Jia, Haojun
Zhang, Chao
Zhao, Hongyu
Ester, Martin
Hacohen, Nir
Head-Gordon, Teresa
Gomes, Carla P.
Sun, Huan
Duan, Chenru
Schwaller, Philippe
Jin, Wengong
author_facet Du, Yuanqi
Yu, Botao
Liu, Tianyu
Shen, Tony
Chen, Junwu
Rittig, Jan G.
Sun, Kunyang
Zhang, Yikun
Krishnan, Aarti
Zhang, Yu
Rosen, Daniel
Pirone, Rosali
Song, Zhangde
Zhou, Bo
Masschelein, Cassandra
Wang, Yingze
Wang, Haorui
Jia, Haojun
Zhang, Chao
Zhao, Hongyu
Ester, Martin
Hacohen, Nir
Head-Gordon, Teresa
Gomes, Carla P.
Sun, Huan
Duan, Chenru
Schwaller, Philippe
Jin, Wengong
contents There has been unprecedented interest in developing agents that expand the boundary of scientific discovery, primarily by optimizing quantitative objective functions specified by scientists. However, for grand challenges in science, these objectives may only be imperfect proxies. We argue that automating objective function design is a central, yet unmet need for scientific discovery agents. In this work, we introduce the Scientific Autonomous Goal-evolving Agent (SAGA) to address this challenge. SAGA employs a bi-level architecture in which an outer loop of LLM agents analyzes optimization outcomes, proposes new objectives, and converts them into computable scoring functions, while an inner loop performs solution optimization under the current objectives. This bi-level design enables systematic exploration of the space of objectives and their trade-offs, rather than treating them as fixed inputs. We demonstrate the framework through a wide range of design applications, including antibiotics, nanobodies, functional DNA sequences, inorganic materials, and chemical processes. Notably, our experimental validation identifies a structurally novel hit with promising potency and safety profiles for E. coli in the antibiotic design task, and three de novo PD-L1 binders in the nanobody design task. These results suggest that automating objective formulation can substantially improve the effectiveness of scientific discovery agents.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_21782
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Accelerating Scientific Discovery with Autonomous Goal-evolving Agents
Du, Yuanqi
Yu, Botao
Liu, Tianyu
Shen, Tony
Chen, Junwu
Rittig, Jan G.
Sun, Kunyang
Zhang, Yikun
Krishnan, Aarti
Zhang, Yu
Rosen, Daniel
Pirone, Rosali
Song, Zhangde
Zhou, Bo
Masschelein, Cassandra
Wang, Yingze
Wang, Haorui
Jia, Haojun
Zhang, Chao
Zhao, Hongyu
Ester, Martin
Hacohen, Nir
Head-Gordon, Teresa
Gomes, Carla P.
Sun, Huan
Duan, Chenru
Schwaller, Philippe
Jin, Wengong
Artificial Intelligence
Materials Science
Machine Learning
Chemical Physics
There has been unprecedented interest in developing agents that expand the boundary of scientific discovery, primarily by optimizing quantitative objective functions specified by scientists. However, for grand challenges in science, these objectives may only be imperfect proxies. We argue that automating objective function design is a central, yet unmet need for scientific discovery agents. In this work, we introduce the Scientific Autonomous Goal-evolving Agent (SAGA) to address this challenge. SAGA employs a bi-level architecture in which an outer loop of LLM agents analyzes optimization outcomes, proposes new objectives, and converts them into computable scoring functions, while an inner loop performs solution optimization under the current objectives. This bi-level design enables systematic exploration of the space of objectives and their trade-offs, rather than treating them as fixed inputs. We demonstrate the framework through a wide range of design applications, including antibiotics, nanobodies, functional DNA sequences, inorganic materials, and chemical processes. Notably, our experimental validation identifies a structurally novel hit with promising potency and safety profiles for E. coli in the antibiotic design task, and three de novo PD-L1 binders in the nanobody design task. These results suggest that automating objective formulation can substantially improve the effectiveness of scientific discovery agents.
title Accelerating Scientific Discovery with Autonomous Goal-evolving Agents
topic Artificial Intelligence
Materials Science
Machine Learning
Chemical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21782