In our final episode of 2024, host Chris Williams and guest co-host, Under the Surface Executive Producer and CCG Vice President, Alain Deschênes have a long overdue chat with computational drug discovery rock star Rebecca Swett. Rebecca shares her journey from her academic beginnings to her current role at X-Chem, via roles at Novartis, Vertex, and Relay. Rebecca’s wide-ranging experience shines through as the conversation wends its way through cutting-edge computational chemistry covering machine learning, molecular dynamics, and DNA-encoded libraries. At the scale Rebecca works at, automation is key, so this topic comes up too. We’re not going to lie; it’s a lot. And, of course, there’s more … Rebecca highlights the significance of allyship and representation for women in science, and the role of community (with a shout-out to the long-running BAGIM modeling forum). Also, in the inaugural asking of the ‘Deschênes Dilemma,’ we find out what Rebecca would be doing if she wasn’t doing all of the above …

On episode 8 of Under the Surface, we’re joined by The Molecular Assassin, Arijit Basu. Arijit describes his journey from India to the US via a transformative sabbatical in Israel. Landing in the Langer lab at MIT and then finding his industrial legs, Arijit turns to computational toxicology as a way to ensure that drug hunters enable the concept of Safety by Design as a core tenant for how they’re navigating chemical space. He doesn’t discuss how he got his cool nickname though, so if that’s what you’re after, you will be out of luck.

This episode was recorded live in Montreal at our 2024 UGM.

This next episode of Under the Surface has us speaking to crystallographer Eric Larson. In episode 7, as you’ll hear, Eric’s a little nervous about having his thoughts committed to ‘perpetuity.’ But, as you’ll also hear, he does a great job. As our first second structural biologist on the show, he tells us about how he got into the field, the very real logistical challenges of working in industry, and his evocative description of what it feels like to peek ‘behind the veil’ and be the first on the planet to observe the structure of a previously unknown protein. It’s a magical episode

This episode was recorded live in Montreal at our 2024 UGM.