University of Delaware Is Using Supercomputer Simulations to Analyze the Coronavirus

Two University of Delaware researchers have been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, using the kinds of high-tech supercomputing tools that previously led them to new insights into other viruses that harm human health. Juan Perilla and Jodi Hadden-Perilla, both assistant professors in UD’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, received the one-year, $200,000 grant this week through the NSF’s Rapid Response Research (RAPID) program. The NSF says RAPID proposals are used in cases of “severe urgency,” including quick responses to natural disasters. The UD researchers are collaborating with investigator Tyler Reddy, also a computational virologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who has collaborated with them on previous studies.

“If you understand how something works, you can understand how to make it stop working. We need to know the atomistic structure so that researchers can determine ways to target it as they work to develop treatments and vaccines.”

The researchers will use computer simulations to analyze the molecular structure of the virus that has led to the current worldwide pandemic. Learning more about the structure “is now essential to provide understanding of viral entry and infection of human cells, a first step in developing novel drugs and vaccines to combat” the disease, Perilla and Hadden-Perilla wrote in a summary of their proposal.

The researchers will use computer simulations to analyze the molecular structure of the virus that has led to the current worldwide pandemic. Learning more about the structure “is now essential to provide understanding of viral entry and infection of human cells, a first step in developing novel drugs and vaccines to combat” the disease, Perilla and Hadden-Perilla wrote in a summary of their proposal.

Read the full story from University of Delaware here.