Matt, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Composites Science, Engineering and Manufacture (CoSEM CDT) will use the £25,000 in start-up funding to support commercial trials of his newly released Atlas platform.
Computational tools have shown extreme benefit for biological sciences and drug development. However, material science as a sector has low uptake of chemical modelling approaches due to a skills gap, with the complexity, cost, and growth of AI in biology capturing experienced computational scientists and funding.
Matt's company, Molydyn, is supporting material scientists, democratising access to powerful computational tools which allow researchers to transfer work from the lab to the computer with the potential to significantly reduce wasted time and resources by reducing the number of lab-based experiments required.
The Atlas platform, which launched in September 2022, simplifies the use of LAMMPS, an open-source molecular dynamics simulator, to help materials scientists get started and accelerate their simulations.
Richard Haycock, CEO QantX, said: "There is on-going need for new materials discovery in relation to many aspects of industry, perhaps most pressingly in relation to new ways of dealing with the climate emergency. However, discovery cycles in this industry are slow and cumbersome.
“Matthew Bone of Molydyn has impressed us with his vision of solving this problem with the use of modern digital tools. The Blavatnik Prize for Innovation is pleased to support their initiative in bringing these tools to market and ultimately helping to solve significant global challenges."
Matt said: "The Blavatnik prize will really help Molydyn to develop the next stage of our simulation technology, as we optimise our tools for commercial grade materials. We're thankful to QantX for their support, and look forward to working with them to help drive sustainable materials discovery."
Read more about Matt's achievements in the press release issued: 1 November 2022
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