MDDB Conference highlights
The MDDB Conference, held from 3 to 5 February 2026 at the CECAM Headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, brought together leading researchers from academia and industry to present cutting-edge studies on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and how this research can benefit from a global and trusted repository in the field. In addition to invited speakers, the programme included contributing talks selected from submitted abstracts, offering applicants the opportunity to present their work to an international audience. The event highlighted the project’s achievements to date and outlined the future impact of the MDDB platform for the global scientific community.
Over three days, the conference featured four thematic sessions addressing key areas of modern MD research. The opening session focused on large-scale MD simulations, presenting advances in data infrastructure, molecular design, enhanced sampling methods, and conformational analysis. The second session explored MD approaches to kinetics and free energy, highlighting applications in drug design, ligand selectivity, and deep learning–based prediction of allosteric sites. Industrial applications were at the core of the third session, which examined automated simulation protocols, molecular interaction fields, research data management, GPU-accelerated workflows, and real-world case studies from pharmaceutical research. The final session emphasized innovative biological applications of MD, covering enzyme mechanisms, precision medicine, antiviral design, inflammasome modeling, membrane simulations, and RNA-targeted drug discovery.
The MDDB consortium presented the database architecture and demonstrated how the platform addresses long-standing challenges in data management through FAIR principles, interoperable standards, and user-friendly tools. Poster sessions, networking events, and a conference dinner further promoted scientific exchange and collaboration.
Building on the scientific discussions, technical presentations, and networking activities, the conference strengthened collaboration within the molecular dynamics community and reinforced the role of the MDDB platform as a FAIR resource supporting high-quality and reproducible research.
