Second Indo-U.S. Workshop on Mathematical Chemistry May 30-June 3, 2000 Duluth, Minnesota

The Second Indo -U.S. Workshop on Mathematical Chemistry with Applications to Drug Discovery, Cheminformatics, and Bioinformatics was held between May 30 and June 3, 2000 at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD), U.S.A., under the joint sponsorship of the Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) of UMD and Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. This issue of the Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences contains papers presented at the Workshop. The idea for this international Indo -U.S. Workshop on Mathematical Chemistry Series originated with Dr. Subhash C. Basak, a Senior Scientist at NRRI/UMD, and received the enthusiastic support of Professor Dilip K. Sinha, Vice Chancellor, Visva Bharati University, India. Dr. Basak is the Co-Chairperson of the Workshop Series from U.S.A., and Dr. Sinha is the Co-Chair from India. The First Workshop of the series was held at Visva Bharati University, India, from January 9 to January 13, 1998. Over 100 scientists from four continents participated in the First Workshop, and its success indicated that such workshops should be held at regular intervals. Following that spirit the Second Indo U.S. Workshop was held in the U.S.A. in the Spring of 2000. The scope of the Second Workshop was broadened as compared to the First Workshop by including within its theme emerging fields such as combinatorial chemistry, genomics, bioinformatics and proteomics, toxicoinformatics, and computational toxicology. Over 125 scientists from four continents participated in the deliberations of this workshop. The 28 papers of this volume comprise part of the presentations from the Second Indo -U.S. Workshop. This Workshop was made possible by the generous support and understanding of NRRI and the University of Minnesota Duluth. In particular, we would like to thank Drs. Michael J. Lalich, Director, NRRI; Vincent Magnuson, Vice Chancellor for Academic Administration of UMD; Kathryn Martin, Chancellor of UMD; and Christine Maziar, Vice President and Dean Graduate School of the University of Minnesota for their support and encouragement. We are thankful to Dr. Donald Harriss, Department of Chemistry, UMD, for his tireless efforts in organizing the Second Indo -U.S. Workshop. The contributions of Teri Williams, Kris Lund, and Marjorie Erickson of the Continuing Education, UMD, as well as Brian Gute and Denise Mills of NRRI for their help with the on-site organization of the workshop and local hospitality are greatly appreciated.