{"id":754,"date":"2019-07-30T13:47:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T13:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/?p=754"},"modified":"2019-07-30T13:47:48","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T13:47:48","slug":"interview-with-prof-rino-ragno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/interview-with-prof-rino-ragno\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Prof. Rino Ragno"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The University of Kragujevac and Sapienza\nUniversity of Rome were the organizers of the computational medicinal chemistry\nworkshop \u201cDesign<sup>IT<\/sup>-to-LEAD2019\u201d held at the University of\nKragujevac, Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics (10-11<sup>th<\/sup> July 2019).\nThe principal lecturer was Prof. Rino Ragno, an Associated Professor at the Sapienza\nUniversity of Rome. Professor Ragno has published more than 120 papers in\npeer-reviewed journals in English with more than 2700 citations (scopus.com\naccessed July 2019), an h-index of 31, 3 patents, three books or book chapters,\npresented his work at numerous conferences and symposia, and he was awarded by\nthe Italian section of Medicinal Chemistry in 2005 for his research. The course\nwas run with the collaboration of Prof. Milan Mladenovic, the Kragujevac local\norganizer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He agreed to give answers on questions for\nour journal, <em>Chemia Naissensis<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>How\nlong are you doing research related to computational chemistry?<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nstarted to study informatics since soon after the master degree in medicinal\nchemistry (1989), then in 1992, I began to apply it to the chemistry. At the\nbeginning, I used to make both synthetic chemistry and molecular modeling till\n1996 when I had the opportunity to go to Washington University of St. Louis in\nthe Garland Marshall lab. Since then, I have been performing all kind of\ncomputational studies from molecular mechanics to quantum chemistry through\nconformational analysis, molecular docking, and not to forget QSAR and other\nsimilar techniques. So, to summarize, I have been working in this field for\nmore than 25 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>What\nis the significance of computational chemistry in drug design?<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Application\nof computational chemistry in drug design means to tackle chemistry rationally.\nParticularly in the medicinal chemistry field, a lot of compounds need to be\nsynthesized to disclose interestingly new chemical entities. Computational\nchemistry speed-ups the discovery of new hits and their conversion to new lead\ncompounds, thus saving time and money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>There\nis the resistance of \u201ctraditional\u201d chemists towards computational chemistry.\nWhat do you think about it?<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Unfortunately,\nyes, there is a lot of resistance from \u201ctraditional\u201d chemists. It is likely because\nthat computational chemistry requires the chemists to learn a brand new science\n(informatics) to be applied to chemistry. I think that we are now in an\nimportant period where informatics and programming languages should be taught\nsince primary school, so that in future its application will be natural as\nspeaking or writing English nowadays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Is\nthere any interest of young chemists in computational chemistry? <\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes,\nthere is a lot of interest, but they are not supported enough. Again, they\nsuffer from low preparation in informatics and computational techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Which\nliterature do you recommend to those interested in computational chemistry?<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>There\nis not precise literature I could recommend. Of course, the first step should\nto acquire the basic skills in manage a personal computer, preferably if\nrunning Linux operating system, but also Microsoft and Mac OS can also be acceptable\nif deeply investigated. Regarding the application of computer in chemistry, I\nrecommend any book a student wishes to start with, but of course, my preferred way\nis to get the information directly from the source like high-level scientific\narticles and the references cited in. I also recommend taking some practical\ncourses and why not some massive open online courses (MOOC), many of them are\nquite good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>What\ndo you think about the further development of computational chemistry? Can it\nreplace <em>in vivo<\/em> experiments<\/strong>?<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I\ndo not think computational chemistry will replace experiments; for sure it will\nallow saving time and money using the better design of the experiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Are\nyou satisfied with your collaborations with universities from Serbia, and\nespecially we would like to know about the perspectives of these\ncollaborations?<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I am very\nsatisfied with the collaboration I have in Serbia. I have two collaboration\nrunning, the first on computational chemistry and essential oil researches in\nKragujevac with Prof. Milan Mladenovic and the other on natural compounds\nresearch in Belgrade with Dr. Vanja Tadic. With Prof. Milan Mladenovic we have\na solid connection, and we will continue to collaborate for many years more.\nSoon we will apply to some project call, and hopefully, we could get some fund\nto raise the level of the collaboration. Soon there will be the possibility to\nopen ERASMUS agreement between Europe and Serbia, and I will try to set-up one\nbetween Roma and Kragujevac Universities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The University of Kragujevac and Sapienza University of Rome were the organizers of the computational medicinal chemistry workshop \u201cDesignIT-to-LEAD2019\u201d held at the University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics (10-11th July 2019). The principal lecturer was Prof. Rino Ragno, an Associated Professor at the Sapienza University of Rome. Professor Ragno has published more than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/IMG_20190711_112131.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paDYnX-ca","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":755,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmf.ni.ac.rs\/chemianaissensis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":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