Internship - Computer-Aided Drug Discovery

Computer-Aided Drug Discovery Internship

General Summary

As Southern Research invests in new business lines and grows its core scientific capabilities, we are providing this exciting internship opportunity in the computer-aided drug discovery (CADD) laboratory of the Scientific Platforms division on the Birmingham campus. The CADD lab is part of the A.I.-enabled integrated tech platform for drug discovery in Southern Research. Through this internship, the trainee will have the chance to learn and apply state-of-the-art computational approaches for scientific research as well as harness the power of supercomputer and cutting-edge A.I. technology for the discovery of new medicines. Besides lab research, the trainee may also gain experience of grant applications, manuscript publications, and conference presentations. Moreover, through the mentorship of experts and participation of drug discovery projects on multidisciplinary teams consisting of internal and external collaborators, the trainee will have the chance to expand the professional network and learn the full picture of the drug discovery pipeline in the industry.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Learning of modern approaches of data science, artificial intelligence, and in silico modeling for scientific research under the mentorship of other CADD scientists.
• Participation in drug discovery projects on a multidisciplinary team including computer scientists, chemists, biologists, and high throughput screening experts.
• Generation and interpretation of in silico data, and communication with the project teams.
• Operation and maintenance of scientific equipment.

Requirements/Minimum Qualifications

• Students in B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. program in chemistry, biology, computer science, bioinformatics, physics, or related discipline.

Training Plan

• First week: basic knowledge of artificial intelligence and in silico modeling for drug discovery
• Second week: familiarity with at least one of the following data science/modeling software such as DeepChem, KNIME, TensorFlow, BIOVIA Pipeline Pilot, Optibrium StarDrop, Schrödinger (e.g., IFD-MD and GPU-accelerated Desmond), AMBER, CHARMM, QChem, VMD, Autodoc Vina, AlphaFold, etc.
• Week 3-9 option 1: practice with A.I. model development (e.g., deep neural network model to predict antiviral activity)
• Week 3-9 option 2: practice (in silico) with one of the trending topics in drug discovery such as Omics, DNA-encoded library, CRISPR, PROTAC, therapeutic target/biomarker discovery, antibiotic drug resistance, precision medicine, epigenetic drug discovery, directed evolution, supramolecular chemistry, bio-macromolecule drug discovery (e.g., antibody, ADC, and mRNA), etc.

Physical Demands

• In performing the work for this position, the employee must be able to perform work utilizing a computer for extended periods of time.

Certifications, Licenses & Registrations

• None required