The award comes as the result of a long and successful collaboration between Ilian and Dr Kostya Trachenko, which started with the Natural Environment Research Council's eMinerals project in 2002 and continues to this day. Ilian leads STFC's Computational Chemistry Group and provides support for CoSeC's collaborative computational project 5 (CCP5) and the High End Computational Materials Chemistry Consortium (HEC-MCC)..
He has led and helped develop the DL_POLY project, providing molecular dynamics simulation software and training which is also supported by CCP5, and which celebrated its 25th birthday in 2017.
Ilian and Kostya have continued to generate and work on projects together to extend their own body of knowledge, and STFC's technical know-how in support of CCP5 and HEC-MCC ambitions. Their collaboration was strengthened last year when Kostya began teaching Masters courses at QMUL based on the DL-POLY software package, and he was also elected as a CCP5 executive member.
