NeurIPS 2023 Workshop on Machine Learning in Structural Biology

Structural biology, the study of the 3D structure or shape of proteins and other biomolecules, has been transformed by breakthroughs from machine learning algorithms. Machine learning models are now routinely used by experimentalists to predict structures to aid in hypothesis generation and experimental design, accelerate the experimental process of structure determination (e.g. computer vision algorithms for cryo-electron microscopy), and have become a new industry standard for bioengineering new protein therapeutics (e.g. large language models for protein design). Despite all of this progress, there are still many active and open challenges for the field, such as modeling protein dynamics, predicting the structure of other classes of biomolecules such as RNA, learning and generalizing the underlying physics driving protein folding, and relating the structure of isolated proteins to the in vivo and contextual nature of their underlying function. These challenges are diverse and interdisciplinary, motivating new kinds of machine learning methods and requiring the development and maturation of standard benchmarks and datasets.

Machine Learning in Structural Biology (MLSB), seeks to bring together field experts, practitioners, and students from across academia, industry research groups, and pharmaceutical companies to focus on these new challenges and opportunities. This year, MLSB aims to bridge the theoretical and practical by addressing the outstanding computational and experimental problems at the forefront of our field. The intersection of artificial intelligence and structural biology promises to unlock new scientific discoveries and develop powerful design tools