Surface coatings play a key role in protecting substrates and enabling functional performance across industries ranging from construction and automotive to aerospace, marine, textiles and healthcare. Against this backdrop, Le, Nguyen, Kaminski and colleagues review the growing role of machine learning (ML) as a transformative tool for the design and optimisation of functional coatings. Event tip:The EC Conference Digitalisation in Coatings Formulation is the ideal platform to learn about the latest advances and trends in the field of digitally assisted coatings production processes. Overcoming these barriers will be essential to establish machine learning as a routine element of coating design and to support the development of more efficient, high-performance and sustainable coating solutions. Source: Le, T. C. et al., Harnessing Machine Learning for the Design of Surface Coatings: Challenges and Opportunities.