Monthly Archives: May 2019

What is the hydrophobic-polar (HP) model?

Proteins are fascinating. They are ubiquitous in living organisms, carrying out all kinds of functions: from structural support to unbelievably powerful catalysis. And yet, despite their ubiquity, we are still bemused by their functioning, not to mention by how they came to be. As computational scientists, our research at OPIG is mostly about modelling proteins in different forms. We are a very heterogeneous group that leverages approaches of diverse scale: from modelling proteins as nodes in a complex interaction network, to full atomistic models that help us understand how they behave.

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Alchemistry Free Energy Workshop 2019, Göttingen

I thought I would use this blog to summarise the recent Alchemistry Free Energy workshop in Göttingen, Germany. This event, organised by MPI BPC and BioExcel, brought together academics and industrialists who work with alchemical MM methods to calculate free energies. This was a very successful successor to a similar event organised two year ago in London and now looks to be repeated yearly, alternating between Europe and Boston.

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Dimensions: The Mathematics of Symmetry and Space

Update: The exhibition was Highly Commended in Oxford’s The Vice-Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research Awards 2019! [Link]

As part of outreach efforts, I have been involved with the exhibition “Dimensions: The Mathematics of Symmetry and Space” at the Ashmolean Museum. This exhibition is a great opportunity to explore a selection of the Ashmolean’s impressive collection from a mathematical (but very accessible) point of view.

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