Paolo Carloni is Professor in computational biophysics at the Department of Physics of RWTH-University of Aachen, Aachen, Germany,  and Director of the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at the Juelich Research Center, Juelich, Germany, after spending a dozen years as Professor in SISSA, Trieste, Italy (1998-2009). He also holds a position as Co-director of the Key Laboratory for multi-scale modeling  at the VNU University of Science in Hanoi, Vietnam. 

Carloni's research focuses on molecular simulation and bioinformatics approaches to molecular biophysics, molecular medicine and structural genomics.

Abstract:
The human brain is the most complex organ known in nature. It features more than 80  billion neurons each making thousands of synaptic connections with other neurons. The communication  between neurons  at synapses is chemical. It involves proteins, small molecules, and other biomolecules such as RNA. Hence, a molecular-level description of chemotransmission is really important to ultimately understand brain function and dysfunction. Here, we will present recent multi scale molecular simulation studies (from quantum to coarse grain) of key molecular processes occurring during  chemotransmission. This knowledge is used to identify new ligands interfering with neurological diseases.

In the final (and short) part of my talk I will completely switch gears.  Given the recent Covid-19 pandemic, our group, as many other simulation groups worldwide, has recently re-directed  part of the research to help combat the virus, helping the scientific community by  data sharing  (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7194014/). Here, I will  briefly describe our current effort, within an EU project involving 18 research units, to identify possibly molecules which may bind and inhibit Covid-19 proteins.  

The talk (approx. 40 minutes) will be in a webinar format, with an introduction by the Director. A question/answer session will follow.
PLEASE REGISTER AHEAD FOR THIS WEBINAR AT THE FOLLOWING LINK: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lJj2IyUsTbCf298uZ__ytw

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The talk will also be livestreamed from the ICTP website.