Welcome to the final Digital Discovery newsletter of 2026! As we head towards the end of the year, please enjoy this round-up of the latest journal news, as well as information on our themed collections and upcoming events. Get future updates directly to your inbox with our email alerts. Sign up here.
Latest News
We’re delighted to welcome Dr Vassiliki-Alexandra (Vanda) Glezakou to the Advisory Board of Digital Discovery. Dr Glezakou is a Distinguished Scientist and Section Head of Chemical Transformations in Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Chemical Sciences Division. Her research focuses on understanding the effects of electronic structure in bonding, reactivity and local structure in condensed environments.
She and her co-workers are developing methods using global optimization approaches to evaluate reactivity in large molecular assemblies, by combining quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and data science. Her research portfolio addresses problems in catalysis, separations and nuclear energy technologies, with emphasis on the chemistry and dynamic evolution of the structure of f-elements in molten salts. Cross-cutting components in all these areas include the use of data science/AI to accelerate molecular simulations, extract chemical descriptors and enhance datasets under FAIR principles.
In her role as Section Head, she leads four groups of 45 scientists who investigate problems related to energy storage and conversion, geochemistry and interfacial science, surface chemistry and catalysis, and chemical dynamics. She graduated from the University of Athens, Greece, and obtained her PhD from Iowa State University. After a post-doc at University of California San Diego and an appointment as staff scientist at Caltech, she moved to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as Senior and Chief Scientist, until 2022 when she joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Research Spotlight
Do humans and large language models agree on the quality of synthesis plans?, Varvara Voinarovska, Rocío Mercado, Mikhail Kabeshov and Samuel Genheden, Digital Discovery, 2026, 5, 3648–3660, DOI: 10.1039/d6dd00266h.
CyclicMPNN: stable cyclic peptide sequence generation, Andrew C. Powers, Yanapat Janthana and Parisa Hosseinzadeh Digital Discovery, 2026, DOI: 10.1039/d6dd00083e.
Electronic manifolds for extrapolative alloy discovery, Pranoy Ray, Sayan Bhowmik, Phanish Suryanarayana, Surya R. Kalidindi and Andrew J. Medford, Digital Discovery, 2026 5, 3850–3862, DOI: 10.1039/d6dd00105j.
Themed Collections
Digital Discovery is currently welcoming papers for a themed collection on work presented at the 2026 AI4X – Accelerate Conference. The collection is led by Guest Editors Yizhou Zhu (Westlake University, China) and Keith A Brown (Boston University, USA), and our Editorial Board member Yousung Jung (Seoul National University, South Korea). If you participated in the conference, please visit our blog post for information on how to contribute your work to the collection before the deadline of 31 October 2026.
We’re pleased to share a new themed collection from on Quantum Computing for Chemistry, Material Science and Biotechnology, led by Associate Editor Matthias Degroote (Boehringer Ingelheim Quantum Lab), and Guest Editors Joonho Lee (Harvard University) and Pauline Ollitrault (QC Ware Corp.) Visit our blog post for the full line-up of articles on this collection on innovative ways to discover, characterize and produce new molecules with quantum computing.
Recent Events
Digital Discovery and Reaction Chemistry & Engineering continued our sponsorship of the awards at the 9th Machine Learning and AI in (Bio)Chemical Engineering Conference at the start of July. The winner of the award for best talk sponsored by Digital Discovery was Elia Savino of the University of Amsterdam for “Robochem-Flex: A flexible and affordable self-driving laboratory for automated reaction optimization”.
This year Digital Discovery sponsored the Academic Poster Prize at the RSC-CICAG / RSC BMCS Artificial Intelligence in Chemistry symposium (https://www.rscbmcs.org/events/aichem9/) which took place in Cambridge, UK over 2nd – 4th September. Congratulations to Auro Patnaik at The University of Edinburgh for their poster “Molecular In-painting for Elaborating Fragments to Hit-like Molecules”.
This year’s ACS Fall Graduate Student Symposium explored “Advancing Chemistry with AI and Emerging Technologies”, and Digital Discovery and RSC Advances were proud to sponsor the oral presentation awards. In alphabetical order, the winners are:
Shyla Chowdhury, Texas Tech University
Joy Jerome, University of Kentucky
Imoleayo Olorunyolemi, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Jyotisman Rath, Purdue University
Congratulations to all for their excellent talks! Our thanks also to all the speakers for taking part, and everyone who participated in this year’s symposium.
Upcoming events
We are hosting a luncheon seminar during the CSJ Chemistry Festa (CSJ化学フェスタ) on 20 October from 12:15 to 13:05 in Tokyo. The seminar will highlight Digital Discovery, and our Advisory Board Member, Dr Seiji Takeda of IBM Research, will discuss the frontier of AI-driven materials discovery. We will also introduce the Royal Society of Chemistry’s updated policy on the use of AI in publishing. Check out the program here.
If you are attending the Festa, we warmly invite you to join us. Simply walk into Room F on the 2nd floor (F会場 福寿) of the venue. A limited number of free lunch boxes will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
We welcome attendees of all levels, including professors and students, and we look forward to seeing many of you there!
第16回CSJ化学フェスタ(2026)プログラム
Digital Discovery is also supporting poster awards at this year’s Chemical Science Symposium, featuring our Editor-in-Chief Prof. Alán Aspuru-Guzik as the 2026 Lectureship winner. This outstanding event under the banner of our peer journal Chemical Science features two days of presentations across 29 and 30 October 2026, at our headquarters in Burlington House, London, United Kingdom. Be sure to register before the deadline of 8 October.
Digital Discovery is participating in the 2026 RSC FIRST conference, themed this year on AI in Chemistry and organised by Xiamen University. The meeting will run from 19-21 November (following a welcome reception on the 28th) in Xiamen, China. Early-bird registration closes 15 October, and standard registration on 15 November. Find out more on the event web site. It’s our pleasure to announce that our Associate Editor Prof. Xin Hong and our Advisory Board member Prof. Jun Jiang are both chairing sessions. Several of the journal’s Associate Editors will also be speaking at the meeting: Prof. Yousung Jung, Prof. N. M. Anoop Krishnan, and Dr Indra Priyadarsini S. Finally, our Deputy Editor Dr Alexander Whiteside will be attending to represent the journal and will be happy to meet. Don’t hesitate to contact us.
We’re also proud to lend our support to a best poster award at the first RSC-CICAG Quantum Computing in Chemistry meeting, Current Capabilities and the Road to Utility. This inaugural conference will feature our Associate Editor Prof. Matthias Degroote amongst many other key speakers. Registration closes 9 November 2026 ahead of the meeting on 19 November 2026 at Burlington Houe, London, United Kingdom.
Digital Discovery and PCCP are teaming up to support the prize for the Best Contributed Talk and a prize for the Best Poster at this year’s Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society (SWRM) taking place in Fort Worth, Texas, USA over 16 – 19th November. Registration for this event is open now.
Later in the year, don’t miss the first Adventures in Chemical Space Symposium at Université du Luxembourg, Luxembourg on 10-11 December 2026, also featuring a Digital Discovery prize for the best poster. In addition to drawing together the broad sphere of chemical space exploration research, this meeting celebrates Prof. Anatole von Lilienfeld’s 50th birthday and recognises his contributions to the field. The program of speakers includes our Associate Editors Prof. Joshua Schrier and Prof. Yousung Jung.
Further ahead, Digital Discovery is sponsoring the 2027 Gordon Research Conference on Self-Driving Labs, “Integrating AI, Automation, and Experimental Science Across Domains“. Running July 11-16 2027 in Newry, Maine, United States, this event spans hardware and software, scientific and technical advances, AI and robotics, and much more. Visit the web page for more information on the program as it develops!
Follow our channels below to keep up to date on the events we’re supporting in late 2026 and in to 2027.
Submit your work to Digital Discovery
Find out more about Digital Discovery on our webpage, where you can also find our author guidelines. Digital Discovery has received a 2025 Impact Factor of 7.1, and provides a first decision on articles sent to peer review in an average of 46 days.
Publishing open access with RSC journals unlocks the full potential of your research – bringing increased visibility, wider readership and higher citation potential to your work. As a not-for-profit organisation serving the chemical sciences community, we ensure that our article processing charge (APC) remains the most competitive of major publishers. More details can be found here and the APC for Digital Discovery is £2200. You can also use our journal finder tool to check if your institution currently has an agreement with the RSC that may entitle you to a discount of the APC.
Stay Connected:
Postdoc or early career researcher? Interested in building your peer review experience and helping improve open data at Digital Discovery? Consider becoming a data reviewer. Find out more on our blog post.
Follow us on LinkedIn and Bluesky for new articles and the latest news from Digital Discovery and related journals at the Royal Society of Chemistry.