The Ninth Conference of the Asia-Pacific Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (APATCC-9) was successfully completed on October 3, 2019, in Sydney, Australia. On the closing ceremony, it’s announced that Professor WU Yun-Dong was elected the new Chair of the conference, following Professor Leo Radom’s fulfillment of duty in the role. Professor WU became the only Chinese scholar elected as APCTCC Chair ever since 2004.

The Asia-Pacific Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (APATCC) is a major organization representing theoretical and computational chemists in the Asia-Pacific region. APATCC was founded in 2004 with Professor Kimihiko Hirao serving as the 1st Chair of Executive Committee. Held every 2-3 years, the APATCC Conferences represent the major event in the Asia-Pacific region that brings together an international network of theoretical and computational chemists. These conferences in the burgeoning field of computational chemistry attract strong participation from government, industry and academia.

Professor WU Yun-Dong is committed to research in computational chemistry and drug design. His research fields include reaction mechanism and stereochemistry; development of accurate protein force fields for protein simulations; drug design based on protein-protein interactions. Professor WU had been elected Co-Chair of the APCTCC 2010 and he was also the first Chinese scholar winning the Fukui Medal in 2014. This election of Professor WU as the Chair for the next APCTCC is an international-wide recognition of his distinctive contribution in the field of theoretical and computational chemistry and of how Professor WU’s work has made a difference to our world.

Professor WU Yun-Dong is committed to research in computational chemistry. His research fields include reaction mechanism and stereochemistry; development of accurate protein force fields for protein simulations; drug design based on protein-protein interactions. Professor WU had been elected Co-Chair of the APCTCC 2013 and he was also the first Chinese scholar winning the Fukui Medal in 2014. This year’s election of Professor WU as the Chair for the next APCTCC would help to bring international-wide influence of China’s research across the field of computational chemistry. Moreover, it strongly signified that China has been establishing influential presence in the computational chemistry community and is receiving incremental recognition from the world with regard to this field.