Invitation to ICTP Webinar Colloquium by Prof. Paolo Carloni on "Computational molecular medicine: from neurobiology to Covid-19" on 10 June at 15:00 hrs.

[ICTP/director]

Dear All,

You are most cordially invited to the ICTP Webinar Colloquium by Prof. 
Paolo Carloni on "Computational molecular medicine: from neurobiology to 
Covid-19"on Wednesday 10 June at 15:00 hrs.

*Pre-registration* is required at the following url: 
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lJj2IyUsTbCf298uZ__ytw

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing 
information about joining the webinar.

The talk will also be livestreamed from the ICTP website.

*Biosketch: *Paolo Carloni is Professor in computational biophysics at 
the Department of Physics of RWTH-University of Aachen, Aachen, Germany, 
and Director of the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at the 
Juelich Research Center, Juelich, Germany, after spending a dozen years 
as Professor in SISSA, Trieste, Italy (1998-2009). He also holds a 
position as Co-director of the Key Laboratory for multi-scale modeling 
at the VNU University of Science in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Carloni's research focuses on molecular simulation and bioinformatics 
approaches to molecular biophysics, molecular medicine and structural 
genomics.

*Abstract: *Abstract: The human brain is the most complex organ known in 
nature. It features more than 80 billion neurons each making thousands 
of synaptic connections with other neurons. The communication between 
neurons at synapses is chemical. It involves proteins, small molecules, 
and other biomolecules such as RNA. Hence, a molecular-level description 
of chemotransmission is really important to ultimately understand brain 
function and dysfunction. Here, recent multi scale molecular simulation 
studies (from quantum to coarse grain) of key molecular processes 
occurring during chemotransmission will be presented. This knowledge is 
used to identify new ligands interfering with neurological diseases. In 
the final (and short) part of his talk, Paolo Carloni will completely 
switch gears.

Given the recent Covid-19 pandemic, his group, as many other simulation 
groups worldwide, has recently re-directed part of the research to help 
combat the virus, helping the scientific community by data sharing 
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7194014/). He will briefly 
describe his current effort, within an EU project involving 18 research 
units, to identify possibly molecules which may bind and inhibit 
Covid-19 proteins.

The talk (approx. 40 minutes) will be followed by a question/answer session.

For info, please check the following link: http://indico.ictp.it/event/9367/

We look forward to seeing you online!

With best regards,

Office of the Director, ICTP