New portal makes cheminformatics educational materials freely available

For several years, Indiana University School of Informatics has been building a graduate curriculum in cheminformatics with an emphasis on distance education, and in particular making cheminformatics learning as accessible as possible for people in a wide variety of disciplines in academia, industry and government. It has now launched a site, the Indiana Cheminformatics Education Portal, where many of the educational materials used at Indiana are being made freely available in wiki format. The site currently contains an initial selection of introductory cheminformatics topics which will be built up during the remainder of the year. The site can be accessed at http://icep.wikispaces.com

IU Cheminformatics Web Services find use in Second Life!

Web Services and Second Life combine to make a powerful tool for virtual chemistry! Cheminformatics web services at Indiana University developed through the NIH-funded ChemBioGrid project (http://www.chembiogrid.org) are now being used to drive advanced chemistry in Second Life. Pioneering work by Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University and Andy Lang at Oral Roberts University is enabling an increasing amount of chemistry and molecular modeling to be carried out in Second Life. The latest project, Orac, allows three-dimensional molecular conformations to be generated on-the-fly. The molecules that Orac makes can be manipulated in many ways. You can easily change the position, size and orientation; you can save the molecules to your inventory for later retrieval, make multiple copies and even distribute them to other users. Also, with a little scripting, you can make the molecules interact with users and even each other. A key part of Orac is the creation of 3D conformers from 2D structures, and this is done using real-time calls to the smi23d web service at Indiana University. This is one of many computation services available through the ChemBioGrid infrastructure. More information about Orac can be found in a YouTube Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOfhuoRbnCg) and in a paper recently submitted to the Chemistry Central Journal (http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/SLchemPaper). More information on the ongoing research into Cheminformatics Cyberinfrastructures at Indiana University can be found at http://cheminfo.wikispaces.com.

Press Release: IU Informatics professor named editor-in-chief of new cheminformatics journal

Taken from http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/10759.html

IU Informatics professor named editor-in-chief of new cheminformatics journal

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 4, 2009

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University School of Informatics professor David Wild has been named editor-in-chief of the recently launched Journal of Cheminformatics (http://www.jcheminf.com). The publication is a peer-reviewed journal launched by Chemistry Central and BioMed Central, leading publishers of open access journals in biology, chemistry and medicine. The journal premiered its first edition in mid-March with several articles including an introductory editorial by Wild (http://www.jcheminf.com/content/1/1/1).

Wild will lead the journal jointly with Christoph Steinbeck, director of cheminformatics at the European Bioinformatics Institute. The journal accepts high quality articles in all aspects of the emerging field of cheminformatics, with a particular emphasis on the application of modern informatics techniques on the boundaries of chemistry, biology and drug discovery. It will publish monthly and will consider articles that relate to research, databases, methodology, software and commentary. Every article will undergo an extensive peer-review process to be conducted by an international editorial board.

"With the vast expansion of publicly available chemical and biological information, cheminformatics is becoming an increasingly important area of research that will play an important role in 21st century biomedical science and drug discovery," Wild said. "The Journal of Cheminformatics is an important part of the growth of this area, and being open access will foster strong interaction with our sister fields of bioinformatics and genomics."

"David Wild, who has been instrumental in the development of the cheminformatics program within the School of Informatics, is an excellent choice to serve as editor-in-chief of this new publication," said Geoffrey Fox, chair of informatics at IU. "He has vast knowledge in the field, extending over research, education and industry issues."

Wild has been on faculty at IU since 2004. He leads the cheminformatics graduate program and is currently working on research into aggregative data mining of publicly available chemical and biological data, funded in part by a grant from Eli Lilly that began last fall and recently was extended for an additional year. He has a bachelor's degree in computing science from Aston University, U.K., and a doctorate in cheminformatics from Sheffield University, U.K.

About the IU School of Informatics

Founded in 2000 as the first school of its kind in the United States, the IU School of Informatics is dedicated to research and teaching across a broad range of computing and information technology, with emphases on science, applications and societal implications. The school includes Computer Science and Informatics on the Bloomington campus and Informatics on the IUPUI campus. The school administers a variety of bachelor and master's degree programs in computer science and informatics, as well as doctorate degree programs in computer science and the first-ever Ph.D. in informatics. The School of Informatics is dedicated to excellence in education and research, to partnerships that bolster economic development and entrepreneurship, and to increasing opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities in computing and technology. For more information, visit www.informatics.indiana.edu.

To speak with Wild, please contact Lisa Herrmann, School of Informatics communications manager, at 812-855-4125 or ljherrma@indiana.edu.

Cheminformatics Research and Teaching Wiki now available

The cheminformatics@iu wiki is now available at http://cheminfo.wikispaces.com that is constantly updated with the latest information on our research, including project details and presentations. It also includes links to teaching materials.

Journal of Cheminformatics publishes first articles

The Journal of Cheminformatics (http://jcheminf.com) has been formally launched with its first articles, including an editorial by David Wild entitled "Grand Challenges for Cheminformatics".

David Wild is appointed editor-in-chief of the new Journal of Cheminformatics

IU Cheminformatics is organizing an eScience for Cheminformatics and Drug Discovery workshop for the IEEE eScience conference in December

The cheminformatics group along with the Community Grids Lab is organizing an eScience for Cheminformatics and Drug Discovery workshop for the IEEE eScience conference in December. A call for papers will be going out soon.