When I started the eCheminfo community of practice in late 2003 we focused initially on using the approach of virtual conferencing and communications to get the community started. More recently I have given more attention to developing face-to-face conference and workshop activity and initiating collaborative research. While on this journey it has been personally rewarding to have met and made contact with hundreds of scientists in the international community and to additionally be involved in supporting their networking, career development and research in drug design, discovery and modelling. It has also been rewarding to have just met so many great people and to have had the chance to interact with them, be it on a computer, in a workshop exercise, or on a punt trying to get down the river as we usually do when we are in Oxford. So far we seem to be better on computer-based physics than boat physics!
And so I have come full circle and can see the need to prioritise the virtual community aspects of eCheminfo further again, to support the continuation of all these worthwhile interactions in the community. So LinkedIn is one place to start. I have been on there for some years and we have had a group area, but have not really done much with it. It has primarily been useful for some introductions between people. However recent feature additions for discussion, posting of news, job announcements etc. have been added, so it seems worthwhile to try using it more for supporting continuing interactions in the community. So I am initiating today invitations to the eCheminfo community to join us there for discussion, news and networking on what is happening in the world of drug discovery informatics, cheminformatics, bioinformatics, etc. Use of the group is intended for scientific and professional exchange purposes only. As included in our mission we encourage cross-disciplinary cross-sector participation so from medicinal chemists in the pharmaceutical industry through toxicologists in government institutes through PhD students working on their modelling research problems are welcome!
To request joining the eCheminfo LinkedIn group please follow the following link and introduce yourself with a group joining request:
https://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1173/77EB680070FF/
I also really welcome suggestions from the community there on what you would like to see as further developments in coming years!
Barry
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