Schrödinger scientists typically travel to over 100 conferences a year all across the world to present on new technology developments and their application in the discovery and design of novel therapeutics and materials. When the COVID-10 pandemic hit in early 2020, and along with it the mass postponement of scientific conferences, we decided to move those presentations online and launched the Schrödinger Summer of Science.
This year we’ve continued this effort with the 2021 Schrödinger Seminar Series, an on demand portal for accessing the latest scientific talks from the Schrödinger team and partners. While nothing can replace meeting with people in person, what we’ve learned about the advantages of online presentations has helped develop our perspective on what we can offer not only now, but well beyond the course of this pandemic.
Reaching a Global Audience
On-site conferences are limited to their location. With our 2021 Seminar Series programming, we’ve been able to reach far more people than we ever could have engaged at a physical conference. Streaming our presentations virtually means that anyone, anywhere could attend the presentations on their own schedules. More than 12,000 people have signed up for our series of webinars across multiple platforms in 2021 – with attendees from more than 100 countries and all 50 U.S. states.
Presentations Live On Indefinitely
These presentations remain online, so anyone who’s interested can view them at their leisure. This ability to re-watch makes the material easier to digest than it would be at an in-person conference where you’re racing from one session to another. Once the series is complete, the presentations will be stored in the training section of our website where they can be accessed in the future as a growing resource for our user communities.
Online Learning Can Continue
Alongside the launch of the Summer of Science series in 2020, we saw a significant increase in interest in the Schrödinger Online Course: “An Introduction to Molecular Modeling in Drug Discovery”—a 25-hour online class, launched in November 2019. In 2020, over 1,300 scientists completed the course. Given the success of this introduction course, we have launched several new courses over the past year:
- Introduction to Computational Antibody Engineering (First session starting November 8th)
We are all eager to return to face-to-face social interaction and scientific discourse, but we know the lessons and practices developed during the pandemic will live on. We hope our commitment to virtual scientific presentations is just one way we can maintain our connection with the scientific community.
