AI for Materials Science

I’m a materials scientist, and my research focuses on using AI to accelerate materials discovery and design—especially for complex metallic alloys, such as high-entropy alloys. I use AI not as a black box, but as a way to connect data, physics, and experiments into a coherent design loop for new materials.

Research Focus

  • Physics-Informed Modeling for Predictive Alloy Design — My main goal is practical: to predict and optimize key properties—like strength, ductility, or stacking fault energy—when experiments are slow, expensive, or noisy. For that, I build “physics-informed” machine learning workflows: instead of learning only from composition, I try to feed the models with physically meaningful descriptors and constraints, so the predictions are more robust and easier to interpret.

  • Data-Centric Materials AI — A big part of my work is also data-centric. I spend a lot of effort curating datasets, checking consistency, and managing uncertainty, because in materials science the data quality often limits the model more than the algorithm itself.

  • Decision-Making: Active Learning and Multi-Objective Optimization — Finally, I’m interested in decision-making tools: active learning to choose the next best experiments, and multi-objective optimization to balance performance with constraints like cost, sustainability, or compositional robustness.

Academic Positions and International Appointments

I am a professor of materials science at the Institute for Condensed Matter Chemistry of Bordeaux (ICMCB, CNRS) and Bordeaux INP in France, which I joined in 2001. Since September 2025, I have been based in Singapore as an Adjunct Senior Researcher at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), within CINTRA, working on AI-guided design of advanced materials. Since 2020, I have also held an Honor Chair Professorship at National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan).

I have built a sustained international research profile, with 120+ peer-reviewed journal publications and around 50 invited talks at conferences and universities. I have coordinated or led multiple EU-funded, national, and industry-partnered projects, and in 2018 I received the Constellium Prize of the French Academy of Sciences for contributions to metallurgy.

Recent Papers & Projects

🚀⚙️ AI-Driven Design of High-Temperature Structural Alloys

In this line of work, developed in collaboration with Prof. A.-C. Yeh (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan), we combine physical metallurgy, CALPHAD-based thermodynamics and physics-informed, AI-driven exploration to design and assess high-temperature structural alloys, including HEAs and CCAs, for extreme-environment technologies.

  • S. Gorsse et al. Advancing refractory high entropy alloy development with AI-predictive models for high temperature oxidation resistance,
    Scripta Materialia 255 (2025) 116394.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scriptamat.2024.116394

  • Foundation model developed, with a manuscript in preparation: a Physics-Resolved Inference & Stacking Model (PRISM) that decomposes monolithic theoretical laws into mechanistic descriptors and combines them with AI to predict high-temperature yield strength and room-temperature ductility in refractory alloys, including high-entropy alloys, creating a reusable foundation model that can be extended to additional properties and alloy chemistries.

🧭🔀 High Entropy Alloys & Complex Concentrated Alloys

In a long-standing collaboration with Dr D. B. Miracle and colleagues at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL, USA), we have mapped the landscape of high-entropy and complex concentrated alloys, quantified their high-temperature performance, and built open mechanical-property datasets that underpin the design of next-generation refractory alloys for demanding aerospace applications.

  • S. Gorsse, D. B. Miracle, O. N. Senkov,
    Mapping the world of complex concentrated alloys,
    Acta Materialia 135 (2017) 177–187.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2017.06.027

  • O. N. Senkov, S. Gorsse, D. B. Miracle,
    High temperature strength of refractory complex concentrated alloys,
    Acta Materialia 175 (2019) 394–405.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2019.06.032

  • C. K. H. Borg, C. Frey, J. Moh, T. M. Pollock, S. Gorsse, D. B. Miracle,
    O. N. Senkov, B. Meredig, J. E. Saal,
    Expanded dataset of mechanical properties and observed phases of multi-principal element alloys,
    Scientific Data 7 (2020) 430.
    https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00768-9

  • O. N. Senkov, S. Gorsse, R. Wheeler, E. J. Payton, D. B. Miracle,
    Effect of Re on the microstructure and mechanical properties of NbTiZr and TaTiZr equiatomic alloys,
    Metals 11 (2021) 1819.
    https://doi.org/10.3390/met11111819

  • O. N. Senkov, S. Gorsse, D. B. Miracle, S. I. Rao, T. M. Butler,
    Correlations to improve high-temperature strength and room-temperature ductility of refractory complex concentrated alloys,
    Materials & Design 239 (2024) 112762.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2024.112762

🌱📊 Sustainability-Informed Alloy Design with AI

This line of work is developed in close collaboration with Prof. M.R. Barnett (Deakin University, Australia) and focuses on integrating economic, environmental and societal criteria into AI-guided high-entropy alloy design.

As part of my work at the interface of AI, alloy design, and sustainability, we develop quantitative indicators, open datasets, and decision frameworks to integrate economic, environmental and societal criteria into high-entropy alloy design. To facilitate the practical application of these metrics, we developed an open-source tool designed to integrate sustainability into alloy design. It calculates 9 economic, environmental, and societal footprints, providing a comparative visualization of new alloy formulas versus current state-of-the-art (HEAs/CCAs) and commercial standards. Streamlit App

The publications below provide a foundation for this sustainability-aware exploration of HEA composition space.

  • S. Gorsse, T. Langlois, and M.R. Barnett,
    Considering sustainability when searching for new high entropy alloys,
    Sustainable Materials and Technologies 40 (2024) e00938.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.susmat.2024.e00938

  • S. Gorsse, T. Langlois, A.-C. Yeh and M.R. Barnett,
    Sustainability indicators in high entropy alloy design: an economic, environmental, and societal database,
    Scientific Data 12 (2025) 288.
    https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-04568-x

  • M.R. Barnett and S. Gorsse,
    Sustainability of High Entropy Alloys and Do They Have a Place in a Circular Economy?,
    Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A 56 (2025) 4249.
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s11661-025-07928-9