Considerans Gouden medaille 2023
Gerard is a frontrunner in the area of artificial intelligence, in particular in the field of drug discovery. He develops and applies various forms of AI to find new drug candidates, to predict the affinities of drug candidates for drug targets, and to explore their activity and toxicity. He collaborates extensively with experimentalists to develop his models, and he actively promotes the use of his models by other scientists by making them easily accessible. His approach is unique to The Netherlands, and makes him a world leader in the area of AI for drug discovery.
Gerard studied Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences at Leiden University, and obtained his PhD at the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research at Leiden University with promotors IJzerman and Van Vlijmen in 2013, working on a project on knowledge-based approaches to link ligand and target information to bioactivity. In this capacity, he became an early adopter of the development and application of Artificial Intelligence in drug discovery. During his PhD he pioneered the combination of chemical and biological data for machine learning, leading to integrated models that could predict resistance of viral mutants as well as antibiotic resistance.
After his PhD he became a postdoctoral fellow at the prestigious European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge (UK) on a Marie Curie / EMBL fellowship. During his postdoc he developed machine learning models that can predict the molecular binding mode of a ligand to a protein. Upon his return to Leiden University in 2015, he established a group in computational drug discovery. Since 2020 he is there full professor in Artificial Intelligence and Medicinal Chemistry. Here he develops large scale deep learning models and applies these models to molecular data. For his ongoing research he is currently consolidating innovation from the machine learning field into the drug discovery domain in the National Growth Fund project OncodePACT wherein he is heading the AI Platform that aims to speeds up oncological drug discovery.
Gerard has a very strong academic track record and great international visibility. This is evident from numerous invited lectures, as well as important personal and large-scale collaborative grants such as VENI and Growth Fund grants. He is also very connected to the scientific community, and bridges various disciplines, in particular computational chemistry, organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry.
Gerard is seen as an inspirational mentor and an active educator. He is also a strong communicator and is very active in outreach to the general public. He has been interviewed in the media many times and is active at societal events and events for primary school pupils. All-in-all, Gerard is a fantastic scientist and a great ambassador for Dutch chemistry.
Congratulations to Gerard van Westen on his well-deserved recognition as this year’s winner of the KNCV Gold Medal!
Jurriaan Huskens
Chair of the KNCV Gold Medal 2023 Committee
