Materials & Energyarticle2026-08-17

A MultitaskLarge Reasoning Model for Molecular Science

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Abstract

Abstract Artificial intelligence in molecular science must move beyond pattern recognition toward chemically valid and interpretable reasoning. We present a task-adaptive large reasoning model that integrates chemical knowledge through a synergistic multispecialist architecture, chain-of-thought supervision, and molecule-informed reinforcement learning. Task-conditioned routing coordinates prediction and inference specialists across 10 molecular tasks spanning molecular description and generation, nomenclature translation, property prediction, and reaction prediction. The model outperforms more than 20 general-purpose and molecular large language models, improves aggregate performance over the base model by 50.3%, and surpasses the leading molecular multitask baseline on most tasks. Analyses of specialist representations and reasoning pathways reveal task-specific adaptation while retaining interpretable chemical inference. A case study further demonstrates an integrated workflow for central nervous system candidate generation, property screening, molecular interpretation, and retrosynthetic planning. These results demonstrate a versatile multitask framework for knowledge-guided molecular reasoning and design, with the potential to serve as a core task engine for future molecular science agents.

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View paper (DOI)Open access versionOpenAlexThe Journal of Physical Chemistry LettersPublished 2026-08-17

Authors: Pengfei Liu, Shuang Ge, Xiaobo Wang, Xin Liu, Jun Tao, Yan Li, Chao Liu, Ling Chen, Zhixiang Ren

Institutions: Sun Yat-sen University, University of Jinan, Southern Medical University, Tsinghua University, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, National Sun Yat-sen University, Guangdong Province Environmental Monitoring Center, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Xiyuan Hospital, Semiconductor Manufacturing International (China)