Sereina Riniker Named to Forbes List
Sereina Z. Riniker, Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zurich was named this month to the highly reputed, "Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science" in 2015 list for her work in combining technology with science to develop to further computer-aided drug design.
Swiss born, Sereina Riniker, ETH Zurich's youngest professor was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science for 2015 list earlier this month. When I asked her about how she felt when she learned that she won a place on the Forbes list she said, "It was a mixture of joy and disbelief. It feels a bit unreal especially when you read the other names on the list and in other categories."
Riniker is combining technology with science to develop "methods and software for classical molecular dynamics simulations and cheminformatics, and their application to biological and chemical questions" with potential future application in computer-aided drug design. Riniker has balanced her research with practical industry and international experiences working with the pharmaceutical giant, Novartis Biomedical Research Institutes in Basel, Switzerland and Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has also conducted research and worked on projects with UC Berkeley, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim in Vienna. Sereina Riniker is now ETH Zurich's youngest tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences.
More about Sereina Riniker's work
Biological systems are constantly in motion. The accurate description of the motion of biological systems is crucial for the understanding of a variety of processes, in particular how a single protein moves; the conformations it can adopt; and how proteins interact with each other or how they bind a drug molecule. One of the molecular systems that Riniker's research group is particularly interested in is a family of proteins, called G-protein coupled receptors. These receptors perform a variety of sensory tasks within the body related to sight, smell, or taste. They also mediate the effect of different hormones. The receptor spans the cell membrane. It recognizes signals from the outside world or from other cells and transmits the incoming information into the inside of a cell: As soon as a messenger molecule binds to the extracellular region of the receptor, the receptor changes its conformation triggering a signaling cascade inside of the cell.
In order to understand and predict the motion and interaction of such biological systems her group performs molecular dynamics simulations. By means of this technique she is able to study isolated biomolecules in atomic detail based on the physical forces between the atoms. Like with a film camera, snapshots capture the motion of the molecules at tiny intervals as the system evolves in time. The increase in computer power in the past three decades has pushed the accessible system size and time scale of such simulations immensely. This progress is opening up new opportunities for applications of molecular dynamics simulations in the areas of cheminformatics and computer-aided drug design previously not feasible and which Riniker's group will explore.
About Forbes
Each year Forbes, an online and print magazine, dedicates an entire issue to celebrating "young superstars" who are the next generation of movers and shakers changing the face of multiple industries. ETH Zurich congratulates Sereina Riniker's achievements and are honored that she has been named named among the top 30 in the world in the field of Science for 2015. In addition to the Forbes honor, Riniker has been awarded the IBM Research Prize, the ETH Zurich Silver Medal, and the Teach-Discover-Treat OpenEye award.
View Sereina Riniker's Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science 2015 mention: external page http://www.forbes.com/30under30/#/science