Oak Ridge National Laboratory
April 30, 2021
Belinda Akpa is a chemical engineer with a talent for tackling big challenges and fostering inclusivity and diversity in the next generation of scientists.
She applies a problem-oriented approach that blends math, physics, chemistry, biology and computational modeling to accelerate solutions in areas including drug development and plant systems.
Her work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is part of the Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine, or ATOM, consortium and focuses on modeling the complex interactions between candidate molecules and the human body to improve outcomes when potential drugs go to clinical trials. The results from Akpa’s systems models will integrate into ATOM’s larger computational framework, which aims to shorten the drug discovery timeline from five years to less than one year. A collaboration of national laboratories, academia and industry, ATOM is working to speed treatments for cancer and COVID-19.
“We’re trying to design and optimize candidate molecules without actually making the chemical compound in a lab,” Akpa said. “With computational models, we can explore whether a particular molecule will shrink a tumor or restore healthy cardiac function.”
