Arieh Warshel Institute of Computational Biology (AWI) and Kobilka Institute of Innovative Drug Discovery (KIIDD) were established on April 10, 2017 and are the first batch of Nobel laureate labs at the University. Led by Nobel laureate in Chemistry in 2013 Arieh Warshel, Arieh Warshel Institute of Computational Biology is a significant milestone in the University’s attempt to evolve into a world research university.

Prof. Arieh WARSHEL earned his PhD degree in Chemical Physics in 1969, respectively), with Shneior Lifson, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Distinguished professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at University of Southern California. He has become a distinguished professor by The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen since September 2014.

Aiming to become a world-class theoretical computational biology center, the Warshel Institute for Computational biology focuses on both basic and practical interdisciplinary research, and  cultivates bioinformatics and systems biology talents with comprehensive training. For basic research, the institute pursues computational structural biology, which covers protein structure prediction, protein engineering and activity improvement, enzyme reaction mechanism, enzyme design, molecular simulations of protein and nucleic acids, computer-aided drug design, algorithm development and software service. For practical research, the institute focuses on high-throughput biology and bioinformatics, which applies high-throughput sequence analysis technology in genomics and precision medicine, covering disease pathogenesis, early diagnosis biomarkers and innovative drug development. The institute will also work closely with ally research platforms, such as the on-campus Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data, Kobilka Institute of Innovative Drug Discovery, Ciechanover Institute of Precision and Regenerative Medicine and off-campus medical institutions, in shaping tight industry-university cooperations that nurture the development of health food, medical and beauty products, plant medicine, drugs and disease gene testing platform in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.