Dr Sofia Oliveira, Senior Research Associate at the School of Chemistry, is among three successful candidates selected from across the UK and the United States to receive £90,000 funding as a 2022 Oracle for Research Fellow and £120,000 Oracle universal Cloud credits, a presigious award which give researchers the flexibility to use any Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and platform services.

Dr Oliveira’s project aims to transform and accelerate the study of changes in proteins by using an innovative computational method, which allows the response of proteins to a structural perturbation to be mapped in a new way for the first time.

The work will uncover the structural networks connecting functionally important regions within each protein to reveal how small molecules and mutations affect those networks. This knowledge will bolster related drug discovery efforts and create new routes for the development of novel therapeutics to overcome addiction to a range of substances, including nicotine and alcohol, manage chronic pain, and treat cystic fibrosis.