Insights From the CEO – June 2024
Welcome to my quarterly blog. I am Dr Jürgen Harter, CEO of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), and here I am going to tell you what scientific innovation means to me and what we do at the CCDC to advance science.
Inspiring Structural Science
I’ve always had a passion for science, with a particular love for chemistry, starting rather early with that chemistry set as a young teenager. This led me to study chemistry and obtain my diploma at the University of Konstanz (Germany), and then the PhD in organic chemistry at The University of Cambridge (UK). My interest in how the molecular world works drove me from the experimental side into the computational realm during my PostDoc in Molecular Informatics (at the Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics) — and I remain intrigued and interested in how small molecules (or any size these days) form, interact with each other, and lead to specific properties and use cases to address challenges.
After over two decades of experience within life sciences, information technology and business, the enthusiasm for science that I had as a young student is still what drives my mission and the CCDC’s vision: advancing science with high-quality structural data and cutting-edge scientific software to build a better world. It is particularly exciting to be able to generate new insights based on this vast chemistry repository that is the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). There is a wealth of knowledge to be explored, and curiosity and collaboration are key.
How Do We Advance Science?
If you, like us at the CCDC, are part of the vibrant community of scientists around the world who are committed to advancing science, you’ll know how much scientific innovation thrives with the development of cutting-edge methods and algorithms.
Our scientists work to constantly improve our software suites with new prototypes and workflows, so that we can provide the most advanced tools for structural visualization and analysis. The CSD nourishes these software suites with curated data from its over 1.25 million experimental crystal structures.
Accessing this high-quality data allows you not only to gain solid insights for your scientific research and hypothesis, but also to advance your own algorithms, and to get reliable outputs when using AI and ML. This is particularly important as the scientific method is now evolving to a more data- and algorithm-driven approach (see the recent findings published by Microsoft).
Advancing Science Together
Advancing science requires the effort of many individuals within the scientific community, and for this reason, connecting and sharing knowledge with others is vital.
To this regard, the CCDC has recently hosted the forum “How Tech is Changing Small Molecule Drug Hunting”, an event that gathered experts in drug discovery to discuss the latest challenges, opportunities, and trends in the field. The event allowed participants to learn from the experiences of others, to build connections and trust with each other, and to discuss about innovations and technologies that make a small molecule biotech company successful.
To further engage with our international network of scientists, in the next couple of months I will be attending the following meetings:
- The American Crystallographic Association (ACA) 74th Annual Meeting in Denver (Colorado);
- The 34th European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM34) in Padova (Italy).
Taking part in these events will give me a clear picture of the research that the American and the European communities of crystallographers and structural scientists are currently undertaking and allow me to bring back valuable insights to the CCDC. On top of that, it will give me the chance to interact with the members of our community, learn from them and offer them data-based solutions to progress their own science.
Why Is All of This Important?
We want to make sure that the global community of crystallographers recognizes the full potential of our tools and the need for big, smart and trusted data to advance science.
We want to encourage all the individuals that share the same passion for science that we have, to contribute to the scientific discoveries with their outputs and methods.
We want to promote a growing environment where each of us learn from others and bring our own valuable perspectives for the benefit of the whole community.
Next Steps
The CCDC is constantly working on building new relationships with key scientists who share our mission of advancing structural science for the public benefit. If you want to discuss further and/or request a demo with one of our scientists, please contact us via this form or .
If you are planning to attend the ACA 2024 in Denver (7-12 July) or the ECM34 in Padova (26-30 August), come to the CCDC’s stand to talk to me and other CCDC representatives. We are very enthusiastic about engaging with our community so always feel free to get in touch with us. We are happy to help.