S=k*ln(W)

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Bill Gates has decided to invest ten million dollars in Schrödinger (www.schrodinger.com), a software company based out of New York City. Schrödinger is not your average software company - they don’t program computer games, build operating systems or develop word processors. Companies like Schrödinger and their San Francisco competitor, Accelrys (www.accelrys.com), choose to focus on building the tools that would allow pharmaceutical companies to create virtual molecules. The hope is that someday chemical and pharmaceutical companies will be spending most of their research time in front of a computer screen designing their products long before anyone ever slips on a lab coat and gets his hands dirty.
The programs that Schrödinger and Accelrys are developing could revolutionize the way many companies design the chemicals which they market to the public and greatly decrease the costs associated with researching novel materials. However, these programs have many hurdles which they still need to overcome in order to generate a product which they can market en masse to industry. Even basic principles like the fundamental mechanisms underlying hydrogen bonding or the interactions between organic molecules and water are not well understood. It’s hard to build a computer program if you don’t have the physical models in place that mimic what you’re trying to simulate.
Because of the inherent difficulty associated with developing these computer models and because of their currently limited applicability, it’s hard for companies like Schrödinger (which had a total operating budget of a paltry twenty million dollars during the last fiscal year) to make a profit. Gates’ investment and the investment of multiple billionaires like him is are game changers and could possibly foreshadow a dynamic alteration in fortune for molecular modeling companies around the world.

Bill Gates has decided to invest ten million dollars in Schrödinger (www.schrodinger.com), a software company based out of New York City. Schrödinger is not your average software company - they don’t program computer games, build operating systems or develop word processors. Companies like Schrödinger and their San Francisco competitor, Accelrys (www.accelrys.com), choose to focus on building the tools that would allow pharmaceutical companies to create virtual molecules. The hope is that someday chemical and pharmaceutical companies will be spending most of their research time in front of a computer screen designing their products long before anyone ever slips on a lab coat and gets his hands dirty.

The programs that Schrödinger and Accelrys are developing could revolutionize the way many companies design the chemicals which they market to the public and greatly decrease the costs associated with researching novel materials. However, these programs have many hurdles which they still need to overcome in order to generate a product which they can market en masse to industry. Even basic principles like the fundamental mechanisms underlying hydrogen bonding or the interactions between organic molecules and water are not well understood. It’s hard to build a computer program if you don’t have the physical models in place that mimic what you’re trying to simulate.

Because of the inherent difficulty associated with developing these computer models and because of their currently limited applicability, it’s hard for companies like Schrödinger (which had a total operating budget of a paltry twenty million dollars during the last fiscal year) to make a profit. Gates’ investment and the investment of multiple billionaires like him is are game changers and could possibly foreshadow a dynamic alteration in fortune for molecular modeling companies around the world.

Source: oci.uzh.ch