Innovating with AI in the special chemicals industry

Specialty chemicals manufacturer Lubrizol is building what vice president of information technology Girish Rao describes as a digital foundation connecting business processes, modern data platforms, and cloud infrastructure to its research and development teams. The stated aim is to let researchers test ideas faster, reach better-informed decisions, and develop more sustainable materials without giving up performance—pairing decades of accumulated technical data with the expertise of chemists and engineers who understand customer needs and the physical limits of their work.

Data scientists contribute by spotting patterns, testing new hypotheses, and modeling possibilities before physical experiments run. Rao is explicit about the boundary: "it's not about replacing scientific judgment; it is about giving our scientists better tools." To bridge the disciplines, Lubrizol organizes "fusion teams" that align scientists, data scientists, and IT staff—groups that otherwise prioritize experimental validity, model performance, and platform security and scalability respectively—around shared objectives. The onboarding method is deliberately modest: start with small pilots to earn trust. "Once the trust is built between the team members and they know what value they're about to create," Rao says, "things go a lot better."

Cloud infrastructure figures in as an economic lever as much a technical one, giving Lubrizol access to computing resources and modern tools without the capital outlay of building and maintaining its own data centers. Rao ties those capabilities directly to sustainability work: digital modeling lets researchers evaluate more formulations, explore alternatives such as starch and corn-based materials, and assess trade-offs across a product's life cycle.

Moving a promising lab material into production remains the harder passage—scaling must satisfy performance expectations, regulatory requirements, and financial constraints at once, a balance Rao calls a tightrope walk. His bet is that AI's capacity to model multiple variables simultaneously helps teams navigate those competing demands rather than resolving them one at a time.

keyFacts

Lubrizol VP of IT Girish Rao is leading the digital transformation effort.

Fusion teams pair scientists, data scientists, and IT staff around shared goals.