Multi-RF Fusion with Multi-GNN Blending for Molecular Property Prediction

arXiv cs.AI / 3/24/2026

📰 NewsSignals & Early TrendsIdeas & Deep AnalysisModels & Research

Key Points

  • The arXiv paper proposes Multi-RF Fusion with Multi-GNN Blending for molecular property prediction, reporting a test ROC-AUC of 0.8476 ± 0.0002 on the ogbg-molhiv benchmark (10 seeds) and claiming #1 on the OGB leaderboard over HyperFusion.
  • The approach combines a rank-averaged ensemble of 12 Random Forests trained on a large concatenated fingerprint vector (FCFP, ECFP, MACCS, and atom pairs; 4,263 dimensions) with blended deep-ensembled GNN predictions at 12% weight.
  • Two key improvements are highlighted: using max_features = 0.20 for Random Forests (instead of the default sqrt(d)) boosts AUC by about +0.008 on a scaffold split.
  • The method reduces GNN-related randomness by averaging GNN outputs across 10 seeds before blending, effectively eliminating GNN seed variance and reducing final performance standard deviation from 0.0008 to 0.0002.
  • The results are achieved without external data or any pre-training, emphasizing the effectiveness of the ensemble/blending and tuning strategy.

Abstract

Multi-RF Fusion achieves a test ROC-AUC of 0.8476 +/- 0.0002 on ogbg-molhiv (10 seeds), placing #1 on the OGB leaderboard ahead of HyperFusion (0.8475 +/- 0.0003). The core of the method is a rank-averaged ensemble of 12 Random Forest models trained on concatenated molecular fingerprints (FCFP, ECFP, MACCS, atom pairs -- 4,263 dimensions total), blended with deep-ensembled GNN predictions at 12% weight. Two findings drive the result: (1) setting max_features to 0.20 instead of the default sqrt(d) gives a +0.008 AUC gain on this scaffold split, and (2) averaging GNN predictions across 10 seeds before blending with the RF eliminates GNN seed variance entirely, dropping the final standard deviation from 0.0008 to 0.0002. No external data or pre-training is used.