arXiv subjects

Qinan Huang

Publications and source records attributed to Qinan Huang.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Active-GRPO: Adaptive Imitation and Self-Improving Reasoning for Molecular Optimization

Scientific reasoning is an increasingly important capability of large language models, yet improving the robustness and efficiency of training such reasoning remains a key open challenge. We study this problem in instruction-based molecular optimization, where answer-only supervised fine-tuning (SFT) collapses multi-step reasoning and reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) suffers from sparse feedback. Reference-guided Policy Optimization mitigates both by anchoring policy updates to dataset-provided references, but its effectiveness is tightly coupled to reference quality: weak or misaligned references impose a performance ceiling. To overcome this ceiling, we propose active reasoning, a paradigm in which the policy actively decides, on a per-instance basis, when to imitate a reference and when to reinforce its own discoveries, while continuously upgrading what it imitates. We instantiate this paradigm as Active Group Relative Policy Optimization (Active-GRPO), realized through two coupled mechanisms: active imitate-reinforce and active referencing. The former performs imitation learning when the reference still outperforms the policy's own candidates, and shifts to self-improvement via reinforcement learning once the policy has generated molecules that surpass the reference. The latter continuously upgrades the reference itself by replacing it with the best policy-generated candidate discovered so far, progressively raising the imitation target and ensuring that reference guidance remains informative-rather than restrictive-throughout training. Across TOMG-Bench MOLOPT, Active-GRPO improves average SRxSim from 0.0959 for GRPO and 0.1665 for RePO to 0.1773 under matched three-seed evaluation, with statistically significant gains on LogP, MR, and QED.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Binding Affinity Prediction: From Conventional to Machine Learning-Based Approaches

Protein-ligand binding is the process by which a small molecule (drug or inhibitor) attaches to a target protein. Binding affinity, which characterizes the strength of biomolecular interactions, is essential for tackling diverse challenges in life sciences, including therapeutic design, protein engineering, enzyme optimization, and elucidating biological mechanisms. Much work has been devoted to predicting binding affinity over the past decades. Here, we review recent significant works, with a focus on methods, evaluation strategies, and benchmark datasets. We note growing use of both traditional machine learning and deep learning models for predicting binding affinity, accompanied by an increasing amount of data on proteins and small drug-like molecules. With improved predictive performance and the FDA's phasing out of animal testing, AI-driven in silico models, such as AI virtual cells (AIVCs), are poised to advance binding affinity prediction; reciprocally, progress in building binding affinity predictors can refine AIVCs. Future efforts in binding affinity prediction and AI-driven in silico models can enhance the simulation of temporal dynamics, cell-type specificity, and multi-omics integration to support more accurate and personalized outcomes.

q-bio.QM↗

arXiv2025

FragmentGPT: A Unified GPT Model for Fragment Growing, Linking, and Merging in Molecular Design

Fragment-Based Drug Discovery (FBDD) is a popular approach in early drug development, but designing effective linkers to combine disconnected molecular fragments into chemically and pharmacologically viable candidates remains challenging. Further complexity arises when fragments contain structural redundancies, like duplicate rings, which cannot be addressed by simply adding or removing atoms or bonds. To address these challenges in a unified framework, we introduce FragmentGPT, which integrates two core components: (1) a novel chemically-aware, energy-based bond cleavage pre-training strategy that equips the GPT-based model with fragment growing, linking, and merging capabilities, and (2) a novel Reward Ranked Alignment with Expert Exploration (RAE) algorithm that combines expert imitation learning for diversity enhancement, data selection and augmentation for Pareto and composite score optimality, and Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) to align the learner policy with multi-objective goals. Conditioned on fragment pairs, FragmentGPT generates linkers that connect diverse molecular subunits while simultaneously optimizing for multiple pharmaceutical goals. It also learns to resolve structural redundancies-such as duplicated fragments-through intelligent merging, enabling the synthesis of optimized molecules. FragmentGPT facilitates controlled, goal-driven molecular assembly. Experiments and ablation studies on real-world cancer datasets demonstrate its ability to generate chemically valid, high-quality molecules tailored for downstream drug discovery tasks.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Topological quantum electrodynamics in synthetic non-Abelian gauge fields

Quantum electrodynamics (QED), a cornerstone framework that describes light-matter interactions rooted in Abelian symmetries, renders the harnessing of synthetic non-Abelian gauge fields as a fundamental yet uncharted frontier. Here, we develop a general theory of light-matter interaction of quantum emitters embedded in non-Abelian photonic lattices. Based on analytical solutions to the non-Abelian Landau dressed states beyond the continuum limit, we reveal chiral photon emission and vortices with emergent nonreciprocity enabled by selective coupling between emitters and spin-momentum-locked bands. When coexisting with Abelian and non-Abelian magnetic fields, emitters hybridize with Landau dressed orbits to form spin-polarized, squeezed Landau polaritons that carry quantized angular momenta, with Rabi frequencies tunable via Landau levels and pseudospin interactions. Multi-emitter dynamics further exhibit collective phenomena governed by real-space staggered phases induced by nonsymmorphic crystalline symmetry. These results bridge non-Abelian physics with quantum optics, and establish non-Abelian gauge fields as a versatile tool for synthesizing topological quantum optical states, angular momentum transfer, and controlling photon-mediated correlations in QED systems, relevant for applications in quantum simulations and chiral quantum optical networks.

physics.optics↗