atlas is a Python package for Bayesian optimization in the experimental science. At its core, the package provides high-performing, easy-to-use Bayesian optimization based on Gaussian processes (with help from the GPyTorch and BoTorch libraries). atlas attempts to cater directly to the needs of researchers in the experimental sciences, and provides additional optimization capabilities to tackle problems typically encountered in such disciplines. These capabilities include optimization of categorical, discrete, and mixed parameter spaces, multi-objective optimization, noisy optimization (noise on input parameters and objective measurements), constrained optimization (known and unknown constraints on the parameter space), multi-fidelity optimization, meta-learning optimization, data-driven search space expansion/contraction, and more!

atlas is intended serve as the brain or experiment planner for self-driving laboratories.

atlas is proudly developed in :ca: at the University of Toronto and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

Install atlas from source by executing the following commands

git clone [email protected]:rileyhickman/atlas.git
cd atlas
pip install -e .

To use the Google doc feature, you must install the Google client library

pip install --upgrade google-api-python-client google-auth-httplib2 google-auth-oauthlib

and gspread

pip install gspread

This section gives minimal code examples showcasing some of the primary features of atlas. You can also familiarize yourself with the package by checking out the following Google colab notebook.

Often, researchers may like to find parameters that are generalizable. For example, one might want to find a single set of chemical reaction conditions which give good yield across several different substrates. [cite MADNESS Science paper]

Consider an optimization problem with $d$ continuous reaction parameters, $\mathcal{X} \in \mathbb{R}^d$ (functional parameters), and a set of $n$ substrates $\mathcal{S} = { s_i }_{i=1}^n$ (non-functional parameters). The goal of such an optimization is to maximize the objective function $f(\mathbf{x})$, which is the average response across all molecules,

$$ f_{\mathcal{C}} = \frac{1}{n} \sum_{i=1}^n f(\mathbb{x}, s_i) . $$

For a minimization problem, the best performing parameters are

$$ \mathbf{x}^* = argmin_{\mathbf{x}\in \mathcal{X}, s_i \in \mathcal{C}} f_{\mathcal{C}} .$$

atlas employs an approach which removes the need to measure $f_{\mathcal{C}}$ at each iteration. Consider a toy problem, where $n=3$, and the following piecewise function is used for $f_{\mathcal{C}}$, and is to be minimized.

$$ f(\mathbf{x}, s) = \sin(x_1) + 12\cos(x_2) - 0.1x_3 \text{ if} s = s_1$$

$$ f(\mathbf{x}, s) = 3\sin(x_1) + 0.01\cos(x_2) + x_3^2 \text{ if } s = s_2$$

$$ f(\mathbf{x}, s) = 5\cos(x_1) + 0.01\cos(x_2) + 2x_3^3 \text{ if } s = s_3$$

The variable $s$ is a categorical parameter with 3 options. $f_{\mathcal{C}}$ has a minimum value of approximately 3.830719 at $\mathbf{x}^* = (0.0, 1.0, 0.0404)$. Given the appropriate olympus parameter space, one can instantiate a planner as follows.

param_space = ParameterSpace()

# add general parameter, one-hot-encoded
param_space.add(
    ParameterCategorical(
        name='s',
        options=[str(i) for i in range(3)],
        descriptors=[None for i in range(3)],       
    )
)
param_space.add(
    ParameterContinuous(name='x_1',low=0.,high=1.)
)
param_space.add(
    ParameterContinuous(name='x_2',low=0.,high=1.)
)
param_space.add(
    ParameterContinuous(name='x_3',low=0.,high=1.)
)

planner  = BoTorchPlanner(
    goal='minimize',
    batch_size=1,
    num_init_design=5,
    general_parameters=[0] # indices of general parameters
)

planner.set_param_space(param_space)

The general_parameters argument to the constructor takes a list of integers, which represent the parameter space indices which are intended to be treated as general or non functional parameters. The figure below shows the performance of atlas compared to random sampling on this toy problem (10 repeats).

Distributed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for more information.

Academic collaborations and extensions/improvements to the code by the community are encouraged. Please reach out to Riley by email if you have questions.

atlas is an academic research software. If you use atlas in a scientific publication, please cite the following article.

@misc{atlas,

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