Rate My Professor Antti Poso

Antti Poso is Professor of Drug Design at the School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, a position he has held since 2003. He earned a Master's degree and a Ph.D. in Pharmacy. Poso leads the Molecular Modeling and Drug Design Research Group, established in 2010, which employs computational methods including molecular docking, similarity searches, 3D-QSAR, pharmacophore modeling, homology modeling, and molecular dynamics simulations. The group's research aims to identify novel drug compounds, optimize lead structures, evaluate target druggability, and develop chemical probes for pharmacological studies targeting cancer, antimicrobial infections, Type 2 diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases. His work emphasizes computer-aided molecular design with primary focus areas in oncology and anti-microbials. Poso also serves as Distinguished Guest Professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and maintains affiliations as part-time Professor at Universitätsklinikum Tübingen and Senior Researcher at the University of Helsinki's Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland.

Poso has co-authored over 339 publications listed on ResearchGate, accumulating more than 8,300 citations, and 245 publications on UEFConnect. Key publications include 'Doing More with Less: Accurate and Scalable Ligand Free Energy Calculations by Focusing on the Binding Site' (2026, Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling), 'A Twist of Fate: The Helix–Turn–Helix Motif in Pseudomonas aeruginosa ExsA Can Allosterically Stabilize the Ligand-Binding Domain' (2025, Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling), and 'Discovery of synthetic small molecules targeting the central regulator of Salmonella pathogenicity' (2025, Science Advances). He received 166,288 euros from the Finnish Research Impact Foundation in 2023 for a one-year Tandem Industry Academia Professor placement at Orion Pharma to advance drug discovery. Additional funding includes over 800,000 euros from the Research Council of Finland for high-performance computing projects in molecular dynamics and AI. Poso contributes to the Drug Discovery and Delivery Technologies (DrugTech) research community and serves as Associate Editor for Predictive Toxicology in Frontiers in Pharmacology.