Andrea Cavalli is Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Bologna and Head of CompuNet at the Italian Istitute of Tecnology, Genova. Prof. Cavalli received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Bologna in 1999 and did postdoctoral work at SISSA (Trieste, Italy) and ETH (Zurich, Switzerland).
Prof. Cavalli’s research has combined computational chemistry with drug discovery, focusing on neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and neglected tropical diseases. He has developed and applied computational tools and protocols to accelerate and enhance the discovery of novel lead and drug candidates. In particular, he has been a pioneer in the use of molecular dynamics simulations and related approaches to drug discovery. He is co-founder of a high-tech startup company (BiKi Technologies s.r.l.) focused on molecular dynamics and enhanced sampling in drug discovery. In an interdisciplinary effort, these approaches led to the identification and characterization of lead candidates within the framework of multitarget drug discovery and polypharmacology.
He is an author of more than 160 scientific articles published in high-ranked journals and inventor in several international patents. He has delivered numerous invited lectures and seminars at international congresses and prestigious institutions. In 2003, he was awarded the Farmindustria Prize for Pharmaceutical Research.
