Stewart Kirton joined the academic team at the School of Pharmacy in November 2008. Prior to this he spent seven years working as a research scientist for a number of pharmaceutical companies, specialising in computer-aided drug design and development. He is interested in exposing students to the computational methods and techniques which help underpin modern drug discovery projects, and hopes it will give them an understanding of how the medicines they deal with on a day-to-day basis originate. He holds a PhD in Chemistry.

• Computational Chemistry and its role in Drug Discovery and Development
• Drug Discovery and Design
• QSAR/QSPR
• Chemoinformatics
• Bioinformatics
• Thermodynamics
• Drug-Receptor interactions at the molecular level.

• In Silico Prediction of metabolism via the Cytochromes P450 – particularly prediction of human only metabolites.
• In Silico design of natural product analogues.
• Comparative modelling of proteins.
• Design and development of databases for virtual screening.
• Computer modelling of aqueous solubility.
• Application of artificial neural networks to physicochemical property prediction.
• Computational design of potent, novel and selective molecules with potential as therapies for pancreatic cancer.
• Computational modelling of percutaneous absorption using QSAR/QSPR techniques
• The role of competency-based assessments in undergraduate degrees.