Major grant to help calculate the interactions of complex molecules
University of Southampton chemists have been awarded a £1.2million Platform Grant by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC); the award will be shared by the University of Cambridge and Imperial College.
The grant will help Chris and his colleagues continue their pioneering work in computational chemistry. Over the last 12 years, he has been developing a new software program to enable chemists to simulate complex, lengthy and expensive molecular experiments at an atomic level. This ONETEP program is already used extensively by academics worldwide and marketed to industries through Accelrys.
“This award will give us the flexibility to maintain and establish promising areas of research at Southampton, working with more complex molecules. For example, it will allow us to advance our research in bio-molecular simulation of drugs and the simulation of catalytic metallic nano-particles for the automotive industry,” explains Chris. “There will be tremendous opportunities here for research students over the next five years.”
The University of Southampton’s Iridis supercomputer is key to our success in computational chemistry. It is one of the largest academic computers in the UK.