Congratulations to David Koes who received an R01 grant from NIH-NIGMS (National Institute of General Medicine) for his research plan, Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science & Engineering (BIGDATA).

This research plan will develop scalable virtual screening algorithms that will enable virtual screening on an interactive time scale (seconds to minutes). These interactive algorithms will be deployed both as open-source software and as part of an online drug discovery collaboration environment. This environment will provide immediate access to the large-scale computational and storage infrastructure needed to allow rapid and collaborative online virtual screening. The proposed research will result in novel algorithms and systems for the storage, retrieval, and analysis of chemical data to support the rapid identification of compounds of therapeutic interest.

The algorithms and systems developed will be immediately and freely accessible via user-friendly online tools. The interactive performance of the online tools will support rapid hypothesis testing and experimentation, giving users the ability to submit their own compound libraries for screening, encouraging cross-discipline collaboration. They will also be used as a hands-on teaching aid for high-school, undergraduate and graduate education.