Gordon Bell Finalists Simulate Largest Known Quantum-Enabled Protein
The research team behind a groundbreaking simulation of a 12,635-atom protein has been named a finalist for the 2026 ACM Gordon Bell Prize. The team combined expertise from Cleveland Clinic's computational chemistry department with IBM Quantum Heron processors and RIKEN's high-performance computing resources.
This achievement marks the largest known quantum-enabled simulation of its kind, demonstrating the potential of coordinated quantum and classical computing to accelerate scientific discovery. The simulation involved a new automated workflow running on RIKEN's ROQUO supercomputer that accelerates research and improves the accuracy of protein-ligand binding energy calculations.
The team reports that their advances could enable researchers to study more complex molecular systems, evaluate experimental conditions, and scale up to increasingly complex molecular systems. This breakthrough has the potential to push the boundaries of molecular research, allowing for the investigation of previously intractable molecular systems due to computational limitations.