Bridging the Sim2Real Gap in Materials

Dunia Innovations is redefining how the world discovers new materials. By closing the “simulation-to-reality” gap, Dunia’s AI-driven autonomous lab, IRIS, fuses robotics, real-world data, and multi-modal learning to accelerate the design of next-generation materials. From energy to chemicals to advanced manufacturing, Dunia is building the discovery engine for a sustainable, abundant future.

CHEManager: Dunia’s tagline is “Bridging the Sim2Real gap in materials discovery.” What does that mean in practice?

Alex Hammer: For decades, materials science has been stuck in slow motion. We now start to have incredible simulations, but very little data to validate them. AI models can simulate thousands of interesting materials candidates, but frankly the only thing that matters is how those materials perform in the real world, at scale, and in actual industrial conditions. Dunia’s platform, IRIS, integrates AI with robotics to simulate, manufacture, stress-test, and analyze materials, learning from physical experiments and then continuously improving predictions and accelerating discovery.

Why is now the right time for this approach?

A. Hammer: The world has never been hungrier for breakthroughs. I mean in areas like clean energy, in sustainable chemicals, advanced manufacturing, etc. But the materials that enable these breakthroughs take decades to develop, and we just can’t afford to wait that long. AI has already transformed fields like protein design; we’re doing the same for materials but grounded in industrial data and automation.

What makes Dunia’s platform different from other AI-for-science efforts?