Poster
in
Workshop: 2nd Generative AI for Biology Workshop
Revisiting Sampling Strategies for Molecular Generation
Yuyan Ni · Shikun Feng · Wei-Ying Ma · Zhi-Ming Ma · Yanyan Lan
Keywords: [ Molecular Generation ] [ Diffusion Model ] [ Sampling Strategy ]
Sampling strategies in diffusion models are critical to molecular generation yet remain relatively underexplored. In this work, we investigate a broad spectrum of sampling methods beyond conventional defaults and reveal that sampling choice substantially affects molecular generation performance. In particular, we identify a maximally stochastic sampling (StoMax), a simple yet underexplored strategy, as consistently outperforming default sampling methods for generative models DDPM and BFN. Our findings highlight the pivotal role of sampling design and suggest promising directions for advancing molecular generation through principled and more expressive sampling approaches.