Schrödinger in the Community

This year, the Schrödinger team has hosted and participated in many great STEM education and outreach events, bringing the science of computational chemistry to students in our communities. As the year comes to a close, we’d like to take a moment to reflect on some of the great events from 2019 and highlight what’s to come.

“I'm always surprised at how much I learn when participating in STEM programs,” said Dr. Jenny Chambers, Schrödinger Senior Scientist II and Education and Outreach team member. “The questions that students ask are quite interesting and usually come from a different perspective than I'm used to encountering. It gets me to think about topics from new angles and having to explain concepts in accessible ways means that I often come to a better understanding of the concept myself!”

Last month, Schrödinger Educational Specialist, Wade Miller, ran another successful event at our NYC offices in conjunction with the World Science Festival. High school students were asked to imagine they were oncologists prescribing treatment to patients in the year 2025 — the year that they might be graduating from medical school — and use Schrödinger software to help determine which drug to give to a cancer patient with a particular mutation. Students learned about computer-aided drug design and computational molecular modeling, and imagined how Schrödinger software could be used to help clinicians make on-the-fly treatment decisions.

 

At the start of the school year, we continued our commitment to the Cristo Rey Corporate Work Study Program by welcoming a new high school student to the Education Team for the 2019-2020 academic year. The student comes into the office once per week to help employees build lesson plans for high school chemistry and biology classes using Free Maestro. When completed, the lesson plans go to high school teachers and students to use and learn more about different scientific concepts. Another high school intern has been working with employees to create a hosting website for the lesson plans and make them easily accessible.

Additionally, every academic year, Schrödinger hosts an advanced Code Nation course for high school students from under-resourced schools. Once per week, Schrödinger volunteers, including Dr. Mayank Misra, Senior Scientist; Dr. Jarrett Johnson, Senior Developer; Steve Dajnowicz, Postdoctoral Fellow; and Karl Leswing, Machine Learning Tech Lead, teach an advanced coding class in our offices.

In the Schrödinger Cambridge office, employees worked with HMS MEDScience, a high school STEM education initiative based in Boston, to coordinate three outreach events throughout 2019. One event, also in partnership with BoSTEM, was a hands-on molecular structure workshop and career panel. There were also two guest lectures at HMS MEDScience's summer program, where Mr. Miller introduced high school students to computational chemistry and led an open Q&A on science and careers.

“The questions about drug discovery and molecular modeling were so nuanced and well thought out that I've never been more optimistic about the future of STEM,” said Mr. Miller.

Over the summer, Dr. Chambers enjoyed participating in a Schrödinger-run session at a science camp at Pace University, coordinated by BioBus. Dr. Chambers led two sessions about microplastic pollution where students used Schrödinger’s Materials Science Platform to evaluate the tendency of different plastics to break down into microplastics. Then, the students discussed how computational modeling could be used to design new plastics that would be less likely to break down into microplastics.

“It was so wonderful to see their enthusiasm and fascination with being able to interact with molecules in a visual, dynamic way. You could see the wheels turning in their minds as they made connections and thought about things in a new way,” said Dr. Chambers.

The Education and Outreach team is planning ahead for 2020 and excited for several upcoming events. This month, Schrödinger employees Dr. Chambers and Dr. Jeremie Vendome, co-founders of the New York Area Group for Informatics and Modeling (NYAGIM invite you to join them on December 16 for a talk and Q&A session with Dr. Karen Akinsanya, Schrödinger Chief Biomedical Scientist. More information on the event can be found here.

Schrödinger employees are also working with BoSTEM, Boston Public Schools, Eli Lilly, and Life Science Cares on a teacher externship program for 2020. The goal of the program is to help STEM teachers get a better sense of how the science that they are teaching is applicable in industry and help them build their networks within the scientific community.

And for those students who aren’t sure what career path they want to pursue, Dr. Chambers leaves them with some encouraging words: “Even if you decide that a career in STEM is not what you want to do, there is so much that having a STEM background can help you with. Most jobs that will be available in 10 years don't exist yet, so staying curious and grounding your learning in exploration will keep you open to the possibilities that are around the corner. Good science is about making good humans, so you don't need to have a career in STEM to benefit from STEM education.”