Winner: 2024 Award for Exceptional Service
Dr Chris Swain
Cambridge Med Chem Consulting, RSC Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group, and Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector
For outstanding service to the Royal Society of Chemistry through the Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group and the Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector.
Dr Christopher Swain describes his work as ‘inventing new medicines’. This is a difficult task that is only possible due to the collaboration of a large team of talented individuals. Despite many exciting advances in science, small molecule medicines (aspirin, for example) are still the mainstay of healthcare, enabling people to live longer with a better quality of life.
Biography
After leaving Clare College in Cambridge, Dr Christopher Swain initially followed an academic path, gaining a PhD and undertaking postdoctoral research at Southampton University, where he had an initial foray into lecturing. In 1986, Christopher was invited to join the Neuroscience Research Centre (NRC) created by Merck in Harlow and spent nearly 20 years there, rising to Senior Director responsible for MedChem and computational chemistry groups.
He was Chemistry Director of the project team that discovered and developed the NK1 antagonist Emend, and this work was recognised by the BMCS prize. In 2006, the NRC was closed, and Christopher founded Cambridge MedChem Consulting. This has led to opportunities to work with a number of brilliant scientists around the world, providing medicinal chemistry and computational chemistry support to small and large Pharma companies, academic groups and start-ups.
Christopher is also on the SAB of several organisations. He continues to support the teaching of drug discovery in Medchem summer schools and helps to develop university courses on computational-driven drug discovery (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.1c00289).
Christopher is an active member of the Royal Society of Chemistry: as Chair of the Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group and a committee member of the Biological and Medicinal Chemistry Sector. He has organised over 30 RSC conferences on AI in chemistry, open source chemistry, macrocycles, protein structure prediction, and the Cambridge MedChem Meeting. He has also organised 20 open source workshops for chemists (https://www.youtube.com/c/RSCCICAG) and is an active member of the Cambridge Cheminformatics network. He has over 100 publications.
After lockdown, when we had our first in-person meeting, so many people came up to me, thanking me and saying how meeting people at conferences was an essential part of their lives.
Dr Chris Swain
Q&A
Tell us about any highlights or memorable experiences you have had as a volunteer.
We were organising an in-person meeting on ‘Open Chemical Sciences’ that, because of lockdown, we had to turn into a five-day online meeting with three intertwined threads. This then led to a series of online workshops showcasing some of the fantastic open source tools available for chemists. This work led to the Inspirational Committee Award in 2021.
After lockdown, when we had our first in-person meeting, so many people came up to me, thanking me and saying how meeting people at conferences was an essential part of their lives.
Do you have any advice for managing volunteering commitments alongside a busy work life?
This can be difficult, the only advice I'd give is don't be afraid to ask for help and advice from the other RSC members.
What impact has volunteering with the RSC had on you, either personally or professionally?
It has certainly given me the opportunity to meet many outstanding scientists.
What advice would you give to somebody contemplating volunteering with the RSC?
Don't worry if you have never done anything like this before, there are many kind and helpful individuals you can turn to for advice.
Tell us about something you are excited for/would like to see next (either in the RSC member networks or more widely in science).
I'm excited by how quickly AI and in particular large language models have advanced in the last few years. I look forward to when they understand the language of chemistry in more detail.