Escaping atom types in force fields using direct chemical perception

David L. Mobley, Caitlin C. Bannan, Andrea Rizzi, Christopher I. Bayly, John D. Chodera, Victoria T Lim, Nathan M. Lim, Kyle A. Beauchamp, Michael R. Shirts, Michael K. Gilson, Peter K. Eastman.
Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 14:6076, 2018 [DOI] [bioRxiv]

We describe the philosophy behind a modern approach to molecular mechanics forcefield parameterization, and present initial results for the first SMIRNOFF-encoded forcefield: SMIRNOFF99Frosst.

Towards Automated Benchmarking of Atomistic Forcefields: Neat Liquid Densities and Static Dielectric Constants from the ThermoML Data Archive

Kyle A. Beauchamp, Julie M. Behr, Ariën S. Rustenburg, Christopher I. Bayly, Kenneth Kroenlein, and John D. Chodera.
J. Phys. Chem. B 119:12912, 2015. [DOI] [PDF] // code: [GitHub] // preprint: [arXiv] 

Progress in forcefield validation and parameterization has been hindered by the availability of high-quality machine-readable physical property data for small organic molecules. We show how the NIST ThermoML dataset provides a solution to this problem, and demonstrate its utility in benchmarking the GAFF/AM1-BCC small molecule forcefield on neat liquid densities and static dielectric constants to uncover problems in the representation of low-dielectric environments.

Predicting small-molecule solvation free energies: A blind challenge test for computational chemistry

Anthony Nicholls, David L. Mobley, J. Peter Guthrie, John D. Chodera, and Vijay S. Pande.
J. Med. Chem. 51:769, 2008. [DOI] [PDF]

A blind evaluation of the accuracy of alchemical free energy methods for computing gas-to-water transfer free energies (solvation free energies) of small molecules demonstrates that modern forcefields are likely sufficiently accurate to be useful in drug design.