SAMPE 2025
Date & Time - May 19th-22nd, 2025
Location - Indianapolis, Indiana
Schrödinger is excited to be participating in the SAMPE 2025 conference taking place on May 19th – 22nd in Indianapolis, Indiana. Join us for a presentation by Andrea Browning, Director of Polymers and Soft Matter at Schrödinger, titled “Aiding Sustainable Composites Development with Simulation of Natural Fibers.” Stop by booth U15 to speak with Schrödinger scientists.
MAY 20 | 10:30AM Accelerating innovation in advanced composites with a digital chemistry platform
Speaker:
Andrea Browning, Director of Polymers and Soft Matter, Schrödinger
Abstract:
Demands for advanced materials and processes have grown as various industries search for improved and lower cost solutions. Their development has traditionally relied on experimental exploration of candidate chemistries, which is time-consuming, expensive and limited in scope. Optimizing key properties of advanced composites, coatings and energy storage requires understanding of their chemistry and microstructure at atomic level. Physics-based modeling and chemistry-informed machine learning (ML) can significantly accelerate the development process from material selection to processing and lifetime analysis, ensuring that target performance is met.
In this presentation, we will show how Schrödinger’s digital chemistry technology can catalyze formulation development through efficient screening of candidate mixtures and increase fundamental understanding of structure-property relationships. We will showcase how our AI/ML and physics-based tools can be applied to the screening of polymer chemistries for target thermomechanical properties for thermosets, efficient additive selection for complex coatings and reactivity at interfaces.
MAY 21 | 3:00PM 
Room 126 Aiding Sustainable Composites Development with Simulation of Natural Fibers
Speaker:
Andrea Browning, Director of Polymers and Soft Matter, Schrödinger
Abstract:
Natural fibers have gained interest as potential components to improve the overall sustainability of composite materials. However, natural fibers have unique challenges and cannot be simply substituted for carbon or glass fibers. Better understanding of how natural fibers behave with standard and new resins, along with how they can degrade can help to reduce the risk in transitioning to these new materials. Molecular scale simulation is a powerful tool to provide that understanding. The interaction between resin and natural fibers as well as the impact of compatibilizers are important in designing a composite formulation for use with natural fibers. The degradation of natural fiber chemistry, cellulose, is also insightful as part of the recycling potential for natural fiber composites. This study will present molecular level simulations that address both the natural fiber composite mechanical properties, as well as degradation of cellulose. These findings highlight the impact of molecular simulations to bridge the connection between molecular level interactions and design considerations in natural fiber composites, aiding in the design of more sustainable composites.