Outstanding young researcher in computational chemistry

24 November 2020

More good news from our fellowship, as another Hertford tutor picks up a prize for their research.

Congratulations to Chemistry fellow Professor Fernanda Duarte, winner of the Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society’s Frank Blaney Award. Established to support young researchers in memory of the MGMS’s founder member Dr Frank Blaney, the award recognises an outstanding researcher in the field of computational molecular science.

Fernanda joined Hertford in 2018, following a Chancellor’s Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. During her PhD in Chile, she was granted a Fulbright Scholarship and the L’Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science Award. She subsequently received a Fellowship from the Bert and Kuggie Vallee Foundation in 2013 and a Newton International Fellowship at Oxford in 2015.

As well as teaching undergraduates and supervising graduate students, Fernanda runs a research group in computational chemistry, the aim of which is to aid the discovery of new mechanisms and molecules that have the potential to impact catalysis and drug development. During the current pandemic, Fernanda’s group has focused their modelling efforts to understand the dynamic behaviour and catalytic machinery employed by the main protein in SARS-CoV-2.