Mariya Popova, a second-year Ph.D. student in the Laboratory for Molecular Modeling, is the recipient of the 2019-20 NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship.
Popova is supervised by Alexander Tropsha, Ph.D., and Olexandr Isayev, Ph.D. Her research focuses on applications and development of deep learning methods for computational chemistry and drug design. Popova is developing deep learning algorithms to solve computational chemistry problems, such as the generation of novel molecules with desired properties and prediction of a synthesis path for a given chemical compound.
“My research goal is to revolutionize drug design with artificial intelligence,” she said. “Having these problems solved will speed up the process of drug discovery and reduce the cost to bring a new drug to the market.”
Popova received her bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and her master’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.
The NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship is a $50,000 research grant, awarded to 10 recipients out of over 230 applications. It is awarded to PhD students who are researching topics that will lead to major advances in the graphics and high-performance computing industries — particularly students pushing the envelope in artificial intelligence, deep neural networks, autonomous vehicles, and related fields.