CCK-17

TL;DR: CCK-17, will be on Thursday, November 28th, 2019, at 5:00 pm in the Seminar Room, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QU. Free CCK-17 tickets are available.

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Dr Wendy Warr (Wendy Warr and Associates, UK): “My Way”

“Comp Chem Kitchen”, CCK-17, will be at 5-6 pm on Thursday, November 28th, 2019, in the Seminar Room, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QU. Our main talk will be a little different from our usual talks. We are delighted to announce Oxford Chemistry alumna, and just-announced winner of the 2020 Herman Skolnick Award, Dr Wendy Warr will be speaking:

Dr Wendy Warr
  • I would like to run through my very varied career experiences but then relate them to what I have done much more recently, and, ultimately, what current students might do in future. For example, the introduction of high throughput screening (HTS) in about 1989 led me to travel around the United States looking at robotically controlled compound stores. I have always had a particular interest in chemical reaction handling and that relates to the current revival in interest in retrosynthesis software, and to AI for reaction prediction. In about 1993-1996, I became a combinatorial chemistry guru. That relates to robotic synthesis also. My very early interest in chemical structure representation (1968!), and later in graphics-based systems for structure searching, relates to the current interest in huge databases of virtual molecules (e.g., Enamine REAL), big data, the need for ultrafast structure searching systems, and de novo drug design.

CAREER HISTORY

  • January 1992 – present, President, Wendy Warr & Associates
    • Wendy Warr & Associates supplies business and competitive intelligence services to a broad spectrum of clients in the United States, Europe, Australia, the Middle East, and Asia. Our success stems from our extensive network and our specialized knowledge of publishing, cheminformatics, and computational chemistry. Pharmaceutical companies, venture capitalists, publishers, software companies, and scientific database producers have benefited from our expert counsel and services in recent years.
  • 1972 – 1991, ICI Pharmaceuticals
    • 1986 – 1992, Manager, Information Services (managed department of 50+ people)
    • 1984 – 1986, Manager, Research Information
    • 1979 – 1984, Senior Systems Analyst/Project Manager for Chemical Information
    • 1976 – 1979, Senior Information Scientist and Systems Analyst
    • 1972 – 1976, Information Scientist
  • 1970 – 1972, Robinson Brothers Ltd., Research Chemist
  • 1968 – 1970, University of Oxford, Part-time Research Assistant, Experimental Information Unit

Lightning Talks

  • Richard Gowers (Senior Software Engineer, NextMove Software):Element Parsing Served Five Ways
    • This talk will explore different levels of optimising a seemingly simple task. Along the way various algorithms used in chemical similarity, bioinformatics and text mining will be discussed.
      • Richard is a Senior Software Engineer at NextMove Software, which develops cheminformatics solutions deployed globally at 9 of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies. He is also the lead developer of MDAnalysis, a Python toolkit for… MD analysis, fancy that.
  • Andre Frade (DPhil student, Department of Chemistry):From molecular diagrams to material properties: development of new tools and frameworks”.

Refreshments will be provided, including beer.

We would like to thank the University of Oxford MPLS Network and Interdisciplinary Fund (NIF) for making CCK possible.

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