The need for scientific software engineering in the pharmaceutical industry

J Comput Aided Mol Des. 2017 Mar;31(3):301-304. doi: 10.1007/s10822-016-9997-x. Epub 2016 Dec 19.

Abstract

Scientific software engineering is a distinct discipline from both computational chemistry project support and research informatics. A scientific software engineer not only has a deep understanding of the science of drug discovery but also the desire, skills and time to apply good software engineering practices. A good team of scientific software engineers can create a software foundation that is maintainable, validated and robust. If done correctly, this foundation enable the organization to investigate new and novel computational ideas with a very high level of efficiency.

Keywords: Research software engineer; Scientific software engineer.

MeSH terms

  • Chemistry, Pharmaceutical
  • Computational Biology
  • Computer-Aided Design*
  • Drug Design
  • Drug Discovery / methods*
  • Drug Industry / methods*
  • Models, Molecular
  • Software*