This month we said Goodbye to a few OG members of OPIG 🙁 among them was one of my favourites, Lucy! (should I apologise to the others?)

Lucy did some amazing work on improving output of generative models during her time in OPIG. One of her recent works involved increasing the plausibility of 3D molecular diffusion models using distorted training data. Check it out here.

Early in her PhD she worked on PointVS with Jack Scantlebury. PointVS is a machine learning scoring function that predicts protein-small molecule binding affinity by learning actual binding physics rather than dataset biases.

Word on the street is she also has some secret works in the making…

She also taught most of us younger Opiglets a little something about structure-based drug design and docking scoring functions when we were just little research babies. I unfortunately have to take over some of her teaching responsibilities, so I have my own personal sadness associated with her departure.

She will be dearly missed by all of OPIG. We will especially miss her as our Birthday Elf, and Ody has some seriously big shoes to fill.

Here are some really cute pictures we all took on Lucy’s last day in the department. We went for ice cream and Lucy brought some cake with her face on it to group meeting. I think she ate her own face, which is a bit questionable, but after four years in OPIG, it’s expected.

Here’s a surprisingly good pano of our ice cream hang out. I’m available for all major events, by the way.

Anyway, we’re all tired of hearing it but “what’s the take home message for your readers?”

So here’s the take-home message – Lucy, you did amazing work, we’re going to miss you a lot and we can’t wait to see you again!