Prof. Dr. Frank Noé of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Freie Universität Berlin is the recipient of this year’s Early Career Award in Theoretical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The highly reputed society cites Noé’s important pioneering work in the development of innovative computational methods in biophysics. In particular, Noé has made important scientific contributions in the field of “Markov Modeling” and its application to protein simulations. Markov modeling is a method of machine learning, an area of artificial intelligence research. Markov models allow the complex dynamics of proteins and other molecules to be modeled as a random jump process between discrete states that correspond to different protein structures. Based on these models, Noé also works on the solution of the so-called sampling problem, i.e., the fact that a direct simulation of rare events, such as protein folding or binding to a drug molecule, could take years to centuries on a supercomputer. The methods developed by Prof. Noé allow such simulations to be done within weeks on ordinary computer game graphics cards. Each year, the division of Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society issues a “Senior” and an “Early Career” prize in theoretical and in experimental physical chemistry to recognize outstanding scientific contributions of its members. This year’s prizes will be awarded at the ACS national meeting in San Diego (US). The society has 160,000 members worldwide.