Bernardo de Souza
@bernadsz.bsky.social
1.1K followers 790 following 170 posts
Nature lover. Curious turned scientist. Part of the ORCA development team. Now bringing Quantum Theory and Molecular Physics to the real world at @faccts-orca.bsky.social https://scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=U6szjgMAAAAJ&hl=pt-BR
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
bernadsz.bsky.social
Very cool to see the massive migration! For all the new ppl:

Here's an ORCA developer and working at @faccts-orca.bsky.social to bring #compchem closer to industry. We're succeeding so far 🤓!

Main topics:

* New optim. algo.
* Speed up calcs.
* Huge scale QM
* Excited states
* ML-boost-to QC

👋🫡
Reposted by Bernardo de Souza
faccts.de
We are visiting STC in Berlin! Come and join us at our poster presentation—we look forward to many exciting discussions with you! Also check out all the new ORCA features and the new ORCA Python interface, OPI!

#FACCTs #ORCAqc #STC2025 #CompChem #TheoChem
FACCTs at the STC 2025
Reposted by Bernardo de Souza
faccts.de
Visit Anneke Dittmer, Bernardo de Souza, and Christoph Riplinger at the SMASH in beautiful Porto! Get the latest information about our quantum chemical NMR toolkit. We look forward to seeing you there!

#FACCTs #ORCAqc #SMASH2025 #CompChem #TheoChem #NMR
FACCTs at the SMASH 2025
bernadsz.bsky.social
PS3: The original post has only limited context (which is OK), so my comment here is not about that one in particular, just in general since so much is happening, and you did ask for it 😆.
bernadsz.bsky.social
PS2: The accuracy I refer to is for MLIP. New functionals like the Skala do improve over wB97M-V - but that's still regular DFT, just a better functional!

They have accelerated what people have been doing by hand for years and it's a perfectly reasonable approach to finding the XC func., IMHO.
bernadsz.bsky.social
PS.: Not even the authors made such big claims, they did a really nice job there and reported as it is. I hope we can test all this and put it to use for the benefit of us all.
bernadsz.bsky.social
Yes, I don't even know why we are discussing this in 2025, as if any of these models they could extrapolate far from the training. This is good old magical thinking, certainly not mathematical one.
bernadsz.bsky.social
5. Overarching claims, IMHO, actually do not help the field, because people might loose trust once it fails. And it will fail, as everything does, so there's no need for that.

We don't need to revolutionize the world every other week. Continuous progress is fine too 😀.
bernadsz.bsky.social
4. It does not mean they are no useful, it is actually amazing that this was achieved! These method will probably become part of our toolkit to solve problems, and they can help a lot. Specially for things like geometry optimization and MD, could be really something.
bernadsz.bsky.social
3. As we know from other models, the gains get smaller with the size of the system. So even to get to the "next level" wB97M-V quality, one probably needs orders of magnitude more parameters and training size, which would be quite challenging. CC seems far off in the horizon.
bernadsz.bsky.social
2. Even if it could perfectly extrapolate to the entire chemical space, the current quality is of good non-hybrid DFT like r2SCAN-3c. It does not "solve the problem", as we know non-hybrid DFT does not unfortunately.
bernadsz.bsky.social
I don't know exactly what Prof. Reiher meant with this to be honest. But in general, I keep my take on it:

1. All current AI/ML are interpolation methods. Which means that, by construction, they are bound to the training space, or "points between points" in the dataset, maybe a bit further.
Reposted by Bernardo de Souza
faccts.de
FACCTs @faccts.de · Aug 27
Great to see many of our collaborators and friends from the ORCA community including Michael Römelt, Dimitrios Pantazis, @podewitzlab.bsky.social, @letigonzalez.bsky.social, @kulikgroup.bsky.social, and many more at the QBIC VII in Berlin, Germany!

#QBICVII #CompChemSky #ChemSky #ORCAqc #ORCA
QBIC VII in Berlin sponsored by FACCTs
Reposted by Bernardo de Souza
faccts.de
FACCTs @faccts.de · Jun 23
Create input and parse output of ORCA with the new ORCA Python Interface (OPI), an open source project supported by FACCTs. Check it out and become part of the OPI community!

GitHub: github.com/faccts/opi
Docs: www.faccts.de/docs/opi/1.0...

#ORCAqc #Python #FACCTs #CompChem #QuantumChem
GitHub - faccts/opi: ORCA Python Interface
ORCA Python Interface. Contribute to faccts/opi development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Reposted by Bernardo de Souza
faccts.de
FACCTs @faccts.de · Aug 25
Hot off the press: “A Two-Level Preconditioner for the CASSCF Linear-Response Equations” by our scientific advisor Benjamin Helmich-Paris (@orca-qc-official.bsky.social). Its already part of ORCA 6.1, check it out!

doi.org/10.1021/acs....

#ORCA #ORCAqc #CompChem #QuantumChem #TheoChem #CASSCF
A Two-Level Preconditioner for the CASSCF Linear-Response Equations
We present an efficient two-level strategy to accelerate the solution of the CASSCF linear-response eigenvalue problem using a customized Davidson algorithm. By identifying a subset of important response-vector components─the so-called P space─we compute and diagonalize full Hessian and metric matrix elements while treating the remaining Q-space components with a diagonal approximation. This approach decouples the orbital and configuration responses, enabling independent preconditioning of each component. Computational cost is further reduced through the resolution-of-the-identity approximation. We demonstrate significant performance gains across a diverse set of molecules, achieving speedups of up to 2.05 compared to the standard diagonal preconditioning. The largest efficiency gains are observed for MCTDA calculations involving many excited states and relatively small response-vector lengths. The two-level strategy is available in ORCA 6.1 and paves the way for extensions to dynamic polarizabilities, which require solving large-scale linear equations, as well as to time-dependent density functional theory and CI singles.
doi.org
bernadsz.bsky.social
Thanks, we are trying :)
bernadsz.bsky.social
In the end it is quite trivial. But I can tell, from a lot of experience, that 33 kcal/mol from such small changes is definitely not the usual.

It really makes me think how "high in energy" might be some drug poses be inside a protein pocket and how much we miss if we are not looking into them.
bernadsz.bsky.social
That's also a good idea. We need to use CovaLED to break through single bonds, but certainly possible.

In this case we just wanted to see if there was one specific fragmengt with a clearly defined spike in energy, but there wasn't.

Take a look at the structures, it's quite interesting
bernadsz.bsky.social
Couldn't boil down to a single thing. It's a bit a this and a bit of that on each fragmengt.

Bur I can say I have a large number of similar off equilibrium structures for other drugs, this is the only striking difference
bernadsz.bsky.social
Correlation does not imply causation, a small RMSD does not mean small energy differences and vice-versa.

Even if one structure is not a minimum, imagine how much extra energy it **would require** to get to that geometry inside a protein pocket or something. It is definitely not negligible 3/3
bernadsz.bsky.social
Simple of course, but still rather unexpected for a small geometry change.

Structures can be found here: github.com/bersouza/Str... if you want to check it with a different method.

All calculated with ORCA, using revDSD-PBEP86-D4/2021 @ def2-QZVPP in gas phase. 2/3
GitHub - bersouza/StrucComp: Two structure for comparison
Two structure for comparison. Contribute to bersouza/StrucComp development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
bernadsz.bsky.social
Update on the last post about two similar structures differing by ~ 33 kcal/mol. We split intro three fragments and saturated with Hs to check the contribution per fragment.

The large total energy difference is explained trivially from a sum of the frag. contribution. 1/3

#compchem
Reposted by Bernardo de Souza