Wendy Warr Interviews Alex Tropsha

WAW: Do you envisage a change of direction? What are your plans for the International Cheminformatics and QSAR Society?

AT: Tudor and I have been actively discussing what the next steps should be and we invite input from all members of the society or the community at large. We believe that our major challenge is to achieve recognition of cheminformatics as a separate scientific discipline, with a stature similar to that which bioinformatics has achieved. The major impediment for the growth has been lack of data in the public domain. This situation has changed dramatically with the establishment of PubChem so our field is attracting the attention of specialists in computer science, statistics, text mining, math, etc. Our plans are to elevate significantly the level of our society to that of a true professional organization, with its own journal(s), meetings, educational activities, job placement assistance, etc. QSARWorld could really help us achieve our goals.

WAW: Is your interest in protein 3D structure analysis new? Tell me more.

AT: No, actually I have been working in the area of protein structure analysis and structure-function relationships for more than a decade, and I have many publications and an active NIH research grant to support my interests. The major methodology that we have been working on relies on the use of computational geometry (more specifically a method known as Delaunay tessellation) in protein structure analysis. I find working on protein 3D structure analysis quite refreshing and in fact methodologies used in that part of our research enrich our cheminformatics research and vice versa.

WAW: My next article for QSARWorld may well be about cheminformatics education. Does it concern you that so few schools offer degrees in cheminformatics?

AT: Absolutely! As I mentioned above, the field of cheminformatics (with QSAR as an integral part) is very complex and challenging, and it requires a lot of diverse and rigorous knowledge of several complementary disciplines even to practice it professionally, let alone advance it. I believe that via publicizing this field, its challenges, its complexity (which must serve to attract the best young minds to enter the field), and by increasing the value of our society we will also achieve the goal of substantially increasing the proliferation of cheminformatics as a formal graduate discipline.

WAW: You moved to the United States in 1989. Do you miss Moscow?

AT: Hmm... I am afraid my quick answer is that I am so busy that I barely have time to even think about it. I love Moscow (actually I love St. Petersburg, where I was born, even more) and I always have a special feeling visiting it, but I probably do not miss it. I would say I perhaps miss much more places that I have not visited yet.