Princeton Resident Receives National Chemistry Award

Case
Case

David Case, a Princeton resident who is a professor of chemistry at Rutgers University, has been chosen to receive the American Chemical Society’s 2015 award for computers in chemical and pharmaceutical research. He will receive the national honor at the American Chemical Society national meeting in Denver next March.

Case, a theoretical and computational chemist, is the co-developer and  lead scientist behind the powerful Amber software suite of biomolecular simulation codes used by more than 1,000 labs y to carry out molecular dynamics analysis of proteins, carbohydrates and nucleic acids. He has created significant improvements to the software that have accelerated the speed of discovery and increased the value of simulations for pharmaceutical research.

“David Case’s pioneering contributions to the science and methodology of biomolecular simulations have guided modern pharmaceutical chemistry research,” said  John Brennan, chair of the Rutgers Chemistry Department. “He is widely recognized by thousands of professionals in the pharmaceutical chemistry and computational chemistry communities for his groundbreaking work throughout his career.”

Case’s current research projects include: the energetics of binding drug candidates to enzymes; mechanical properties of nucleic acids; conformational preferences of polysaccharides; and the determination of solution structures by NMR. He also is active in the development of new energy functions, such as force fields, and simulation methods to help make these calculations more predictive.

A member of the editorial board of Biopolymers since 1990, Case has served in similar capacities for numerous research journals. Case’s publication record, which includes nearly 300 scientific papers and publications, has one of the highest citation records of any chemist nationally.

Case earned a Ph.D. in chemical physics at Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Michigan State University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Case’s research takes place at the Rutgers Center for Integrative Proteomics Research, a relatively new facility located on the Busch Campus that is  dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary studies of  complex biomolecular phenomena.