ACS Award For Computers In Chemical & Pharmaceutical Research

Sponsored by the ACS Division of Computers in Chemistry

With the complexity that characterizes computational chemistry, it’s easy to fall into the weeds and lose sight of the big picture. But that isn’t the case for Martin Stahl.His focus on applications for computational chemistry has provided researchers with new tools and methods for drug discovery and has helped make him the first chemist from industry to win this award.

Stahl, 44, is the head of molecular design and chemical biology at Roche. He studied chemistry in Germany and received a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from the University of Marburg in 1997. Rather than stay in academia, Stahl dove straight into industry and joined Roche that year. “Roche was my postdoc,” he says.

Stahl’s work focuses on blending theoretical and experimental chemistry; he prefers to take up theory only when it can clearly lead to an application. “There has always been some experimental counterpart to what I’ve done theoretically,” Stahl says. “I have always been interested in making sure that what I do computationally has a meaning or can be confirmed and leads to an experiment.”

In a field that works with complex mathematics and physics, Stahl places significant value on simplicity and conciseness.

“I’ve always pursued the philosophy that computational chemistry doesn’t need to be something complicated,” Stahl says.

Within Roche, Stahl created and led a computer-aided drug design group and worked to provide medicinal chemists with computational tools to discover and build new drugs. Stahl coinvented two drug candidates—an anticoagulant and a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis—that have reached clinical trials. And he has helped develop software including ReCore, a tool for designing three-dimensional molecular scaffolds.

Stahl puts a lot of the credit for his and his team’s findings on collaborations with others across fields and disciplines. And he believes in ensuring that the tools and methods that his teams develop are available to support the field. “What we’ve learned, we’ve shared with the world,” Stahl says. “We make sure that the tools we have built are available either freely or commercially. This is something I’ve greatly encouraged.”

Stahl has been an author on multiple journal publications, such as “A Medicinal Chemist’s Guide to Molecular Interactions” (J. Med. Chem.2010, DOI: 10.1021/jm100112j). He has been a member of the advisory boards of both theJournal of Medicinal Chemistry and the Journal of Chemical Information & Modeling.

Stahl is married and has two kids, aged 14 and 16. The family often spends time in a mountain cabin on the French side of the Rhine valley. Stahl also loves to cook. “It’s the most practical chemistry field left in me,” he says.

Stahl will present his award address before the Division of Computers in Chemistry.