Growth Arc Newsletter

When R&D Meets AI: Compressing Materials Development Timelines

Written by Kendall Justiniano | 26 March

- When R&D Meets AI: Compressing Materials Development Timelines -

with Greg Mulholland

Materials executives today are being asked to:
  • Deliver growth and margin in volatile markets.
  • Shorten development timelines and respond to customers at “software speed.”
  • Protect decades of tacit formulation and process know‑how as experts retire.
  • Hit sustainability and regulatory targets while removing PFAS, BPA and other risky ingredients.

Join a conversation with Greg Mulholland, co‑founder and CEO of Citrine Informatics, on how AI is changing the way leading materials and chemicals companies develop, reformulate, and commercialize products. We will focus on practical ways to make AI a growth and risk‑reduction tool in real R&D and business development organizations. Greg will share how leading companies are using AI to build usable digital representations of their materials systems to accelerate innovation and commercialization.

What we’ll discuss

  • Turning scattered, under‑specified lab and process data into a usable asset for R&D.

  • Capturing scientific intuition and heuristics so AI augments, rather than replaces, your best chemists and formulators.

  • Using “search spaces” to keep AI recommendations manufacturable, scalable, and compliant with cost and supply constraints.

  • Accelerating reformulation for sustainability and liability reduction while maintaining performance.

  • Enabling application engineers and business developers to respond to customer requests in days instead of weeks.

Who should attend

  • VPs of R&D, Technology, and Innovation in chemicals, polymers, bio- and specialty materials.

  • Executives in Business- and Application Development, and Product Management responsible for turning technical capability into growth.

  • General Managers and P&L owners who need to “do something with AI” without derailing their labs or taking on unmanageable risk.

Event Details

  • Thursday, May 7 2026, 10 am ET

  • Register below - replay available for all Roundtable Members


Greg Mulholland
Guest Speaker

CEO, Citrine Informatics

Greg Mulholland is the co-founder and CEO of Citrine Informatics, the leading AI platform for materials and chemicals development. He founded Citrine in 2013 on a simple conviction: that the materials science industry — critical to solving the world's most pressing environmental challenges — was still discovering new materials the way Edison would have, and that AI could fundamentally change that. 

Under his leadership, Citrine has defined the field of materials informatics, serving global chemicals and materials companies and earning recognition as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, CB Insights AI 100 company, and World Materials Forum Startup of the Year.

Greg has spoken at leading conferences on six continents and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Earlier in his career, he worked in the semiconductor industry at the intersection of computation and materials, an experience that shapes his practical focus on using AI to compress development cycles and improve R&D decision‑making. 

Greg holds an MBA from Stanford, an MPhil in Materials Science from the University of Cambridge, and a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from NC State University.