Subject: news from the Cheminformatics Virtual Conference

From: Barry Hardy <barry.hardy:at:tiscalinet.ch>
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 21:12:38 +0100

**** News from the Cheminformatics Virtual Conference Launch ****
http://conferences.metalayer.net/echeminfo/

Contents
1. eCheminformatics 2003 Conference: sessions now available
2. Winner of Best Poster Award
3. Next events: November 27 and December 8
4. Knowledge Management in Pharma R&D

1. eCheminformatics 2003 Conference: sessions now available

All eCheminformatics 2003 talks from the first week's launch conference are 
now available to conference registrants at 
http://conferences.metalayer.net/echeminfo/ with audio. You can also still 
post a question or comment and the Speaker will be alerted. Highlights include:

- Karl Harrison, Oxford University, explains how Grid Computing approaches 
have been deployed recently in Smallpox research for the virtual screening 
of 35 million compounds to produce ca. 45 promising lead compounds
- Miklos Vargyas, Chemaxon, presents a compelling talk on his approach to 
optimized virtual screening which he shows is capable of reducing the size 
of the 'search haystack' by an order of magnitude *** This talk is now 
available as free access to anyone logged into the site
- Alex Tropsha, University of North Carolina, presents a set of convincing 
guidelines for developing higher quality validated and predictive QSPR models
- Mark Mackey, Cresset BioMolecular Discovery Ltd, presents a promising 
approach with promising results on using the surface and shape properties 
of a molecule described as 'field points' which when combined with a 
similarity metric allows molecules' field properties to be rapidly compared

.........and much more than I have space for here!

2. Winner of Best Poster Award

We received some excellent poster contributions at the launch conference 
and our speaker panel found it was a close choice. In the end, we decided 
to have one overall winner and award 'silver medals' to two others:

Voted Best Poster:
2-Pyridineacetamides: a novel class of Tyrosine Kinases Inhibitors
Alessandro Contini, Universita degli Studi di Milano

Silver Posters go to:
MyMol: web-based molecular database
Matteo Floris, University of Padova, and

Virtual synthesis with "smart" reactions
Gyorgy Pirok, Chemaxon

We'd like to thank Bio-Rad for their generous support of Alessandro Contini 
and Matteo Floris through the Young Investigators Program. We have invited 
both of them to present their work to you (see next events below).

All hub members are entitled to submit a poster of their work in the field 
of cheminformatics and we very much hope you will soon take advantage of 
this opportunity. We see this as an important part of the networking 
aspects of the hub, as it helps people have a 'starting point' for 
conversation, which could lead to collaboration, which could lead to....

3. Next events: November 27 and December 8

Thursday, November 27 (11.15 am Eastern Time USA / 4.15 pm GMT UK / 17.15 CET)
·       2-Pyridineacetamides: a novel class of Tyrosine Kinases Inhibitors, 
Alessandro Contini, Universita degli Studi di Milano
Monday, December 8 (11.15 am Eastern Time USA / 4.15 pm GMT UK / 17.15 CET)
·       MyMol: web-based molecular database, Matteo Floris, University of 
Padova
If you'd like to attend either of these live, via teleconferencing, please 
contact us at least 24 hours beforehand! Otherwise, the recorded talks will 
be available to temporary or full hub members on the hub within a few hours.

4. Knowledge Management in Pharma R&D

On December 1st, Douglas Connect, and Eyeforpharma are also launching a 
virtual conference and hub for Knowledge Management in Pharma R&D. So if 
you or colleagues elsewhere in your organisation would like to know more 
about things like integrating electronic lab notebooks to accelerate 
discovery, or how enhanced communication applications like blogs and 
collective intelligence can help you, please go to
http://conferences.metalayer.com/km/

best regards,
Barry Hardy
eCheminformatics Conference Chair
Douglas Connect
www.douglasconnect.com
+41 61 851 0170 (office)