Schrödinger in the Community

Schrödinger’s ongoing commitment to numerous outreach programs aimed at improving STEM education access continued this month with two exciting events hosted at our NYC office.

How will the next generation of doctors use precision medicine by 2025? That’s a question we pondered when we recently hosted a STEM education event in partnership with World Science Academy (WSA), a program that gives New York City high school students opportunities to interact with renowned scientists in a variety of settings.

During the event, our education specialist, Wade Miller, hosted 23 students and four WSA teachers and administrators for two hours in our NYC office. The premise of the session was to place students in the year 2025—the year that they might be graduating from medical school—and ask them to imagine they were oncologists prescribing treatment to patients. After a quick introduction to Schrödinger’s work and mission, Miller demonstrated how to use Maestro, our all-purpose molecular modeling application, to help students visualize drug interactions within the body and calculate binding affinity.

The students analyzed the interactions of two known cancer drugs with one of 10 different genetic variations. They then ran an MMGBSA, or binding energy, calculation to predict which drug would have a better binding affinity to the genetic variant of interest and therefore predict which drug might be more effective for a cancer patient with a given genetic variant. Each student was able to calculate a result and there was a lot of interest in computer aided design and drafting.

In partnership with Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM), a program that brings advanced enrichment learning to low-income students, we recently welcomed nine local high school students for a 3-hour session that included a panel discussion with Schrödinger team members and hands-on exercises about quantum mechanics.

Schrödinger’s Dr. Jenny Chambers, senior scientist II and education and outreach team member, opened the session with an overview of Schrödinger’s work and mission. Dr. James Fennell, software engineer, and Dr. James Stevenson, senior scientist, taught students about Schrödinger's Equation and helped them use Maestro to make peptides representing their names and calculate the single point energy of their name.

We are so pleased to participate in programs like these and hope they help high school students not only learn about computational technology, but also develop a lifelong interest in the life sciences. We’re also thrilled to see our employees engage with the community and advance their own learning.

Want to get involved in the next event? Please contact: education@schrodinger.com.