2026 Hansch, Fujita and Leo Award Recipients
The QSAR, Chemoinformatics and Modeling Society (QCMS) is pleased to announce the recipients of its three biennial awards for 2026: the Hansch Award, the Fujita Award, and the Leo Award. The awardees were selected by the QCMS Board of Directors in collaboration with the International Organising Committee of 25th EuroQSAR. All awards will be formally presented at the 25th European Symposium on Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationships (EuroQSAR 2026).
Hansch Award 2026
Dr. Alpha A. Lee
The Hansch Award, established in 2000 and named after Prof. Corwin Hansch, honors a young scientist under the age of 40 for significant contributions to QSAR and related fields. The 2026 Hansch Award is presented to Dr. Alpha A. Lee in recognition of his outstanding and interdisciplinary scientific achievements.
Dr. Lee has already established an exceptional track record spanning cheminformatics, machine learning, drug discovery, and materials science. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of PostEra, a machine-learning–driven drug discovery company founded in 2019. He has played a leading role in open and community-driven antiviral discovery efforts, most notably as a Principal Investigator in the COVID Moonshot, which delivered a candidate targeting SARS-CoV-2 Mpro in under 18 months. He is also a Principal Investigator in the NIH-supported ASAP Discovery Consortium, which aims to establish a global pipeline of antivirals against pathogens of pandemic concern.
Dr. Lee’s scientific contributions include the development of the Molecular Transformer for chemical reaction prediction, advances in molecular and materials property prediction, and the discovery of novel antiviral compounds.
In view of his achievements and impact, Dr. Lee is widely regarded as an emerging leader in the field.
Fujita Award 2026
Prof. Dr. Tudor I. Oprea
The Fujita Award, established in 2016 in honor of Prof. Toshio Fujita, recognizes a senior scientist for sustained, influential contributions to QSAR and computational studies of biologically active compounds. The 2026 Fujita Award is presented to Prof. Dr. Tudor I. Oprea.
Prof. Oprea has made seminal contributions to cheminformatics and computer-aided drug discovery over more than three decades. He has published over 370 papers and is among the most highly cited scientists in the field. His work has shaped modern drug discovery through conceptual advances such as lead-likeness, comprehensive mapping of drug targets, and the creation of widely used open-access resources including DrugCentral and PHAROS. Importantly, his research extends beyond methodology and databases to experimentally validated compounds and clinical candidates.
Prof. Oprea has also provided long-standing service to QCMS and the EuroQSAR community. He served as Chair of the Society from 2002 to 2012 and has been a member of the EuroQSAR Scientific Advisory Committee for over two decades.
The Society is honored to recognize Prof. Oprea’s scientific leadership and service with the 2026 Fujita Award.
Leo Award 2026
Dr. Gregory Landrum
The Leo Award, established in 2026 and named after Albert J. Leo, recognizes a seminal contribution that has had a lasting, field-defining impact on QSAR and chemoinformatics. The inaugural Leo Award is presented to Dr. Gregory Landrum (ETH Zurich) for his creation and sustained leadership of RDKit.
Since its introduction in 2006, RDKit has become the most widely used open-source cheminformatics toolkit worldwide. Designed as a comprehensive and extensible platform, RDKit provides core cheminformatics algorithms, robust molecular representations, visualization tools, database integration, and seamless interoperability with modern data-science and machine-learning workflows. Its impact on academia and industry has been transformative, fundamentally changing how chemoinformatics is practiced and taught.
Beyond the software itself, Dr. Landrum has fostered a vibrant and collaborative open-source community, ensuring RDKit’s continued evolution and reliability over nearly two decades.
The scope, longevity, and influence of RDKit make Dr. Landrum’s contribution a model example of the type of achievement the Leo Award was created to honor.