Herman Skolnik Award Symposium 2016 Honoring Stephen Bryant and Evan Bolton A report by Wendy Warr (
[email protected]) for the ACS CINF Chemical Information Bulletin Introduction Stephen Bryant and Evan Bolton were selected to receive the 2016 Herman Skolnik Award for their work on developing, maintaining, and expanding the Web-based National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) PubChem database, and related software capabilities and analytical tools, to enhance the scientific discovery process. NCBI is part of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A summary of Steve and Evan’s achievements has been published in the Chemical Information Bulletin. They were invited to present an award symposium at the Fall 2016 ACS National Meeting in Philadelphia, PA. They invited twelve speakers: L to R: Valery Tkachenko, Roger Sayle, Leah McEwen, Steve Heller, Wolf-Dietrich Ihlenfeldt (partially obscured), Yulia Borodina, Peter Linstrom, Steve Bryant, Marc Nicklaus (at front), Evan Bolton (at back), Steve Boyer, Daniel Zaharevitz, Christoph Steinbeck. Not pictured: Michel Dumontier (inset) Developing databases and standards in chemistry Steve Heller was the first speaker, with an amusing scene-setting talk. He admitted that his secret in getting to where he is now was “luck, luck, luck”. He disliked chemistry lab work; he was at the right place at the right time with the right people; he worked with supportive people; and he planned for who would take over the work next. If the problem were just technology, someone would have solved it already. The real problem is always cultural and political, not technical.