Bios | DivCHED CCCE: Cheminformatics OLCC

Evan Hepler-Smith

Evan Hepler-Smith is a historian of science and technology. Currently, Evan is Ziff Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment; he holds a Ph.D. in History of Science from Princeton University. Evan studies the history of chemical information from the 19th century through the present day. His research shows, first, that debates over chemical nomenclature, notation, and information management have been central to the intellectual and institutional development of global chemistry. Second, he shows that century-old approaches to chemical information have shaped how digital chemical information is handled today. He is excited to bring this historical perspective to the OLCC collaboration.

Stuart Chalk

I am an Associate Professor Chemistry trained as an analytical chemist with expertise in flow analysis methodology and instrumentation. Over the last 15 years I have morphed into a cheminformatician working on research projects to develop data standards (e.g. the Analytical Information Markup Language - AnIML, Common Standard for eXchange – CSX, Experiment Markup Language - ExptML), electronic laboratory notebooks (e.g. the Eureka Research Workbench), scientific ontologies (e.g. the Chemical Analysis Ontology – CAO), and scientific data representation. My current projects include: REST API development for NIST-IUPAC solubility datasets, chemical property data extraction and annotation from PDF files, scientific data framework (SciDF) development, and the Chemical Analysis Metadata Platform (ChAMP). I have expertise in XML and Markup Languages, XSLT/XPATH/SVG, RDF, JSON/JSON-LD, PHP, Javascript, MySQL, SPARQL, CSS, CMS’s, REST interfaces, API design and construction, schema design, ontology development and Fedora-Commons.

Leah McEwen

Leah McEwen is the Programmatic Coordinator for the Edna McConnell Clark Physical Sciences eLibrary and the Chemistry Librarian at Cornell University. Her background is in biochemistry and library science and she is responsible for library resources and specialized services supporting chemistry in all fields and science and technology studies at Cornell. She has contributed to and served in advisory capacity for a number of information resources including the ACS Style Guide, the ACS CPT Guidelines for Bachelor’s Degree Programs, Cornell’s VIVO, and CAS’ SciFinder. She is an active member of the Chemical Information Division of the American Chemical Society, most recently as Secretary as well as Program Chair, addressing a wide range of topical interests from open access to advanced training and education to intellectual property and licensing to data- and text-mining. She is also a member of the ACS Joint Board-Council Committee on Publications, the adjoining Subcommittee on Copyright and the Chemical & Engineering News Editorial Board.

David Wild

I am CoPI of the Cheminformatics OLCC project, and an Associate Professor at Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, where I run the Cheminformatics and Chemogenomics Research Group (CCRG). Since 2004, I have been running a graduate cheminformatics program there, offering Ph.D., M.S. degrees and certificates in Cheminformatics, with an emphasis on distance education. I have previously run graduate classes in cheminformatics using a variety of remote technologies, including videoconferencing, web conferencing, wikis and the CIC Courseshare program. Most recently, I created the Indiana Cheminformatics Education Portal of free cheminformatics learning materials, along with an associated low cost Introducing Cheminformatics eBook. I also run a Cheminformatics Education Google+ Group for discussion of cheminformatics education resources and opportunities.

Andrew Lang

Andrew SID Lang Andrew Lang is a Professor of Mathematics and Chair of the Computing & Mathematics Department at Oral Roberts University. Lang has been involved in many Open Science Projects including The Open Notebook Science Challenge and the Blue Obelisk Movement, performs his research under Open Notebook Science Conditions, and publishes his results in Open Access journals. While trained as a mathematical physicist his current research group is focused on building Open Models based upon Open Data and Open Descriptors of physical-chemical properties such as melting point and solubility.

Ralph Stuart

Ralph has been the Chemical Hygiene Officer at Keene State College in Keene, NH since 2014. He graduated from Cornell University in 1979 and got his master's at the University of Vermont in 1989. He managed lab safety at UVM for 25 years and was the Chemical Hygiene Officer at Cornell for 3 years before moving to Keene State.

Xavier Prat-Resina

I am an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at The University of Minnesota Rochester's “Center for Learning Innovation”. I am interested in figuring out in what ways technology can help learning and it what ways it hinders it. I have authored several web platforms that make use of graphical interfaces to learn chemistry. Models 360 is a collection of several hundreds of molecules, where properties such as structural symmetry, vibrations and electrostatic maps can be displayed with the Jmol applet. More recently, I developed ChemEd X Data as a graphical tool to help students navigate through large amounts of chemical and physical data and build their own knowledge by figuring out on their own trends and exceptions. I am also interested in assessing how much learning or how different the learning is when we move from a face-to-face classroom environment to an interconnected computer environment. This is why I am thrilled to be part of the OLCC project and learning in what ways the new communication technologies can overcome the current barriers of our educational system.

Abhik Seal

I am a PHD (Chemical Informatics ) student at Indiana University Bloomington working with Prof David Wild at the chemgenomics and cheminformatics lab .Before joining here I was a Banker at State Bank of India.

Robert E. Belford

I am a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a focus on the use of computers in Chemical Education. I am interested in how digital ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) are changing the way our society shares and communicates information, and the impact this is having on chemical education and the practice of science. I currently serve as Chair of the ACS Division of Chemical Education's (CHED) Committee on Computers in Chemical Education (CCCE), and see the Cheminformatics OLCC as an opportunity for the CCCE to contribute to the advancement of science by providing a mechanism for the integration of these new and evolving technologies into the chemistry curriculum.

Nathan Brown

Nathan Brown is the Head of the in silico Medicinal Chemistry group in the Cancer Therapeutics Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research in London (UK). At the ICR, Nathan and his group support our entire drug discovery portfolio together with developing new computational methodologies to enhance our drug design work. Nathan conducted his doctoral research in Sheffield with Professor Peter Willett focusing on evolutionary algorithms and graph theory. After a two–year Marie Curie fellowship in Amsterdam in collaboration with Professor Johann Gasteiger in Erlangen, he joined the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Basel for a three–year Presidential fellowship in Basel working with Professors Peter Willett and Karl–Heinz Altmann. Nathan's work has led to the pioneering work on mulitobjective de novo design in addition to a variety of discoveries and method development in bioisosteric identification and replacement, scaffold hopping, molecular descriptors and statistical modelling. Nathan continues to pursue his research in all aspects of in silico medicinal chemistry. Nathan recent published the first book on bioisosteres, entitled Bioisosteres in Medicinal Chemistry.