WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
The award was made to speed up production of a complete polarizable force field for proteins. This will permit more accurate calculations of protein structures and protein-ligand binding energies. The results are expected to be of positive value in biomedical research in general and anti-cancer studies in particular. For example, application of the resulting force field should facilitate discovery of new potent medical drugs.
One postdoctoral-level specialist was working on the project and was funded by this award during the first quarter of 2012 (Dr. Haijun Yang, started on July 15, 2010), and the amount of effort dedicated to this project by the Principal Investigator and funded by this award was 7.5% of his overall working time during two academic years. In addition the PI received a partial summer salary from this funding during the summer of 2012.