What I learned from a career in computer-assisted molecular design

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Yvonne C. Martin, yvonnecmartin@comcast.net, 2230 Chestnut St., Waukegan, IL 60087
A fads come and go in CAMD, certain truisms remain: 1.) It is better to use an old or inaccurate method to help solve the real problem of your experimental collaborators than to use a fancy method that solves a problem that they don't have. 2.) It is often more fruitful to use computational methods to help set priorities than to use them to suggest new, and potentially time-consuming, directions. 3.) Encourage your collaborators to come up with tests of your predictions. This way if the predictions are correct, everyone is happy and if they are incorrect, you have more work to do but have gained scientific respect. 4.) Pay attention to the needs of your collaborators. If you don't have a method to solve a particular problem, let it rest and someday someone, maybe you, will come up with a solution.