CCDC Student Project Wins RSC/MGMS Prize
Our hearty congratulations go to CCDC Ph.D. student Danny Vatvani, who was one of the three winners of the Kate Burt Prize at the recent Royal Society of Chemistry and Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society Young Modellers Forum, held in London. This is a tremendous achievement for a very bright young scientist.
Danny Vatvani
Danny is a joint student of the CCDC and the Chemistry Department of the University of Cambridge, and is one of the research scientists working within the Pfizer Institute for Pharmaceuticals Materials Sciences. His work has focused on the prediction of the morphology of crystals of organic solids. Crystal habit is of tremendous importance in a wide variety of areas, for example in the production and processing of new pharmaceuticals.
Using the hundreds of thousands of entries where crystallographers have diligently reported the ‘habit’ of crystals used for structure determination, Danny has evaluated the performance of existing software for habit prediction and developed a new method, based on the calculation of interaction energy between a molecule and its neighbours on the surface of a crystal. His innovation will, of course, soon make its way into the software we provide.
I am proud of the support that CCDC has provided to over 50 Ph.D. students, usually in collaboration with other research groups in Universities. We always welcome ideas for interesting joint research and the outcome is often – as in this case – an exciting innovation with practical applications. I look forward to many more prize-winning projects in the years to come.
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