[Apologies for multiple postings] ************************************************** * * * GRAND Seminar * * http://cs.gmu.edu/~robotics/Main/GrandSeminar * * ************************************************** *Title* The Role of Cheminformatics in Modern Drug Discovery *Time/Venue* CS conference room, ENGR 4201 Noon, October 04, Tue. *Speaker* Simon Wang Assistant Professor Howard University *Abstract* Cheminformatics (also known as chemoinformatics and chemical informatics) is the application of informational techniques to a range of problems in the field of chemistry. These in silico techniques have played an increasing role in modern drug discovery and translational sciences in recent years. The development of cheminformatics methods and procedures that enable the automatic identification and extraction of privileged structures is very important in the context of generating knowledge from High-Throughput Screening (HTS) data. In this talk, I am going to introduce our recent efforts on the methodology development in this area that aims to improve the performance of virtual screening, i.e., finding molecular structures that are similar in their activity to the probe molecules or even predicting the activities of compounds in a library. Several successful cases using the cheminformatics technique will be presented as well. *Short Bio* Simon Wang is currently an Assistant Professor and the Head of the Laboratory of Cheminfomatics and Drug Design at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy Howard University (HU). He is also a faculty member for the Georgetown-Howard Universities Center for Clinical and Translational Science (GHUCTSA) Biomedical Informatics (BI) component, and an investigator for the District of Columbia Developmental Center for AIDS Research (DC D-CFAR). Dr. Wang received his B.S. degree in Pharmacy from Peking University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, a M.S. degree in Pharmacology from Peking Union Medical College, and a Ph.D. degree in Computational Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry and Quantum Theory Project at the University of Florida. Prior to his joining the HU in late 2010, Dr. Wang had postdoctoral training with Dr. Harel Weinstein at Cornell University and had been a junior faculty at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). -- *Jyh-Ming Lien* Assistant Professor, George Mason University +1-703-993-9546 http://cs.gmu.edu/~jmlien