ChemFit: A framework for automated high-dimensional model parameter optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sallermann, Moritz, Goswami, Amrita, Collepardo-Guevara, Rosana, Ocana, Alberto, Jónsson, Hannes, Jónsson, Elvar Ö., Espinosa, Jorge R.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Sallermann, Moritz
Goswami, Amrita
Collepardo-Guevara, Rosana
Ocana, Alberto
Jónsson, Hannes
Jónsson, Elvar Ö.
Espinosa, Jorge R.
author_facet Sallermann, Moritz
Goswami, Amrita
Collepardo-Guevara, Rosana
Ocana, Alberto
Jónsson, Hannes
Jónsson, Elvar Ö.
Espinosa, Jorge R.
contents The parameterization of simulation-based models is a central yet laborious task in computational chemistry and physics, often driven by human intuition and manual iteration. Automating this task necessitates the definition of suitable objective functions, which tend to be expensive to evaluate, noisy, non-differentiable, or composed of heterogeneous contributions originating from separate sets of simulations. Gradient-free and black-box optimization algorithms are powerful tools which are particularly well-suited to minimizing such objective functions. Here, we introduce ChemFit, a flexible Python framework for the definition, composition, and massively concurrent evaluation of simulation-based objective functions, which is designed to operate in conjunction with these algorithms. We demonstrate the broad applicability of this approach by using ChemFit for three representative examples of increasing complexity and real-world relevance. First, we obtain the parameters of the Lennard-Jones potential for liquid argon from experimental measurements of the density. Second, we parameterize a polarizable and flexible potential energy function to reproduce the structure of small H$_2$O clusters obtained from density functional theory calculations. Finally, we tune a small subset of the parameters of a residue-level coarse-grained protein force-field, with the goal to reproduce the experimental critical solution temperature of the low complexity domain of the wild-type hnRNPA1 sequence and an arginine-enriched mutant of this protein. hnRNPA1 is an RNA-binding protein linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Together, these examples illustrate how ChemFit enables scalable, reproducible, and optimizer-agnostic parameter fitting for broadly applicable multiscale models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_11769
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ChemFit: A framework for automated high-dimensional model parameter optimization
Sallermann, Moritz
Goswami, Amrita
Collepardo-Guevara, Rosana
Ocana, Alberto
Jónsson, Hannes
Jónsson, Elvar Ö.
Espinosa, Jorge R.
Chemical Physics
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
The parameterization of simulation-based models is a central yet laborious task in computational chemistry and physics, often driven by human intuition and manual iteration. Automating this task necessitates the definition of suitable objective functions, which tend to be expensive to evaluate, noisy, non-differentiable, or composed of heterogeneous contributions originating from separate sets of simulations. Gradient-free and black-box optimization algorithms are powerful tools which are particularly well-suited to minimizing such objective functions. Here, we introduce ChemFit, a flexible Python framework for the definition, composition, and massively concurrent evaluation of simulation-based objective functions, which is designed to operate in conjunction with these algorithms. We demonstrate the broad applicability of this approach by using ChemFit for three representative examples of increasing complexity and real-world relevance. First, we obtain the parameters of the Lennard-Jones potential for liquid argon from experimental measurements of the density. Second, we parameterize a polarizable and flexible potential energy function to reproduce the structure of small H$_2$O clusters obtained from density functional theory calculations. Finally, we tune a small subset of the parameters of a residue-level coarse-grained protein force-field, with the goal to reproduce the experimental critical solution temperature of the low complexity domain of the wild-type hnRNPA1 sequence and an arginine-enriched mutant of this protein. hnRNPA1 is an RNA-binding protein linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Together, these examples illustrate how ChemFit enables scalable, reproducible, and optimizer-agnostic parameter fitting for broadly applicable multiscale models.
title ChemFit: A framework for automated high-dimensional model parameter optimization
topic Chemical Physics
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.11769