• Albert Invent is a digital platform that uses AI-driven analysis to assist chemists with research.
• The platform integrates data from electronic lab notebooks to speed up product development.
• This article is part of "How AI Is Changing Everything: Supply Chain," a series on innovations in logistics.

Cosmetic chemistry, or the science of making beauty products, is a complex process that requires understanding how ingredients interact with each other and with the skin.

With so many variables to consider — safety, shelf lifespan, texture, and appearance — the process of blending ingredients for face creams, eye shadows, lipsticks, and other cosmetics can be time-consuming for chemists, who typically conduct independent research to figure out which compounds and minerals can work together to create a safe, effective, and sellable product.

Albert Invent, based in Oakland, California, seeks to simplify this process for chemists with its digital platform called Albert.

The company's CEO, Nick Talken, said Albert enables chemists to research and develop safe, high-performing products without the need to refer to the notebooks and spreadsheets where they typically store data. Since Albert integrates data that's already been stored in electronic lab notebooks and laboratory information management systems, chemists can come up with test-worthy formulations in less time.

How AI can help chemists develop safe and effective cosmetics

Albert is trained on more than 15 million molecular structures, Talken said. When chemists — from companies like the adhesive and cleaning supplies manufacturer Henkel, the Teflon-maker Chemours, and the chemical manufacturing company Nouryon — use the platform, they can look up which permutations of molecules will work best to achieve a specific goal.

The platform was designed to capture the kind of information that chemists typically track in notebooks or on spreadsheets, such as the materials and substances they might use, their compositions, and processing steps.

When a chemist asks Albert for input on which other substances work well with a particular ingredient, the system offers feedback on possible substance combinations and predicts the physical, toxicological, and visual properties of new compounds before they are synthesized in a lab. This AI-driven analysis gives formulators the opportunity to determine whether a concoction is safe and effective to produce, or whether they should scrap the idea, in minutes.

Albert Invent partnered with Nouryon, which owns a collection of formulation strategies for the personal care industry (think cosmetics, hair care, and skincare products) that have been cleared as effective and safe. The result: a digital platform for developing new cosmetics formulations, called BeautyCreations.

Instead of employing the traditional product-development methods of trial and error and real-time experimentation — methods that can typically take anywhere from four to six weeks — Nouryon's chemists can use BeautyCreations to look through the company's existing formulations for hair and skincare products and filter for results that match their desired safety standards and marketing claims, all while adhering to stringent development timelines.

David Freidinger, the vice president of personal care and pharma at Nouryon, said this technology has enabled the company's chemists to develop new products from almost anywhere in the world. It's also improved the speed and quality of Nouryon's internal product development, as the company can look at BeautyCreations data to better understand market trends and prioritize development initiatives accordingly.

An AI tool for chemistry beyond cosmetics

Arthur Tisi, a former CTO and chief information officer who advises private equity and portfolio companies on digital technology strategies, said that the molecular AI technology behind Albert could be of use to other data-heavy industries in the future.

"The ability to 'digitalize' our technical expertise and make it available to customers 24/7 enables accelerated scaling and efficiency in customer support," Tisi wrote in a recent email to BI. He added that tools like Albert are powerful because they offer both product-formula data and consumer insights.

Tisi said that in the future, the value of molecular AI will go beyond its speed benefits. He said that this technology has the potential to uncover certain chemical formulations that scientists might miss.

Freidinger said industries that use reams of empirical data to create products or deliver services could benefit from AI tools like Albert to improve speed and quality.

"The same technology that speeds up skincare development can revolutionize personalized medicine, where rapidly identifying the perfect molecular combinations could mean delivering custom-targeted therapies for individual patients, potentially turning fatal diagnoses into manageable conditions," Freidinger said.

Meanwhile, Talken said that Albert has the potential to be used for inventing new polymers and batteries.

Over the last century or more, humanity has been developing an ever-growing number of new chemicals that have never been seen before by Earth's creatures. Many of these chemicals end up being toxic contaminants that we'd love to get rid of, but we struggle to purify them from the environment or break them down once we do. And microbes haven't had much chance to evolve the ability to break them down for us.

Over the last few years, however, we've found a growing number of cases where bacteria have evolved the ability to break down such chemicals, like industrial contaminants and plastics. Unfortunately, these bacteria are all different species, target different individual contaminants, and thrive in different environments. But now, researchers have developed a new way to take the genes from all these species and place them in a single bacterial strain that can decontaminate complex waste mixtures.

Targeting contaminants

The inspiration for this work was the fact that a lot of this industrial contamination contains a mixture of toxic organic molecules that are commonly found in brackish or salty water. So, the research team, based in Shenzhen, China, started by simply testing a number of lab bacteria strains to develop one that could survive these conditions. The one that seemed to survive the best was Vibrio natriegens. These bacteria were discovered in a salt marsh, and their primary claim to fame is an impressive growth rate, with a population being able to double about every 10 minutes.

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Kevin Peterson is a "nose" for his own perfume company, Sfumato Fragrances, by day. By night, Sfumato's retail store in Detroit transforms into Peterson's craft cocktail bar, Castalia, where he is chief mixologist and designs drinks that pair with carefully selected aromas. He's also the author of Cocktail Theory: A Sensory Approach to Transcendent Drinks, which grew out of his many (many!) mixology experiments and popular YouTube series, Objective Proof: The Science of Cocktails.

It's fair to say that Peterson has had an unusual career trajectory. He worked as a line cook and an auto mechanic, and he worked on the production line of a butter factory, among other gigs, before attending culinary school in hopes of becoming a chef. However, he soon realized it wasn't really what he wanted out of life and went to college, earning an undergraduate degree in physics from Carleton College and a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan.

After 10 years as an engineer, he switched focus again and became more serious about his side hobby, perfumery. "Not being in kitchens anymore, I thought—this is a way to keep that little flavor part of my brain engaged," Peterson told Ars. "I was doing problem sets all day. It was my escape to the sensory realm. 'OK, my brain is melting—I need a completely different thing to do. Let me go smell smells, escape to my little scent desk.'" He and his wife, Jane Larson, founded Sfumato, which led to opening Castalia, and Peterson finally found his true calling.

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