Thomas Murphy, California State University, Fullerton

Title: The geometry of molecular surfaces

Abstract: The similarity principle can be phrased as saying two molecules which have similar shape will have a similar effect when used in a drug, meaning that finding a way to quantify how similar two given molecules are is a major problem in chemistry. I will give an overview on some applications of differential geometry to this topic, mostly focusing on describing the surface as a complex manifold and employing Kaehler quantization to provide a new answer to this question. This is joint work with D.Cole, R. Pirie and S.J. Hall.