Giuseppe Barca awarded 2025 Dirac Medal
Associate Professor Giuseppe Barca has been awarded the 2025 Dirac Medal from the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (WATOC).
The Dirac Medal is the highest accolade globally in the field of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, assigned each year to a scientist below the age of 40. Medallists are selected by the Board through an electronic ballot.
Associate Professor Barca is based in the School Computing and Information Systems in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (FEIT).
The Medal recognises his pioneering of the first exascale quantum chemistry algorithms that enable GPU-accelerated electronic structure calculations of energies, gradients and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) at unprecedented biomolecular scale, accuracy and speed.
Associate Professor Barca and his team were awarded the 2024 Gordon Bell Prize, regarded as the ‘Nobel Prize’ of high-performance computing (HPC) in November 2024.
His breakthrough in HPC and quantum chemistry, announced in July 2024, which achieved the first quantum-accurate simulation of biological systems, will enable scientists to simulate drug behaviour with near experimental accuracy. The software will enable new drugs to be developed faster and cheaper, and for diseases that have – so far – been too difficult to treat.
FEIT Dean Professor Thas Nirmalathas said the University is “enormously proud” of Associate Professor Barca.
“His groundbreaking achievements have outstanding promise for improving health outcomes around the globe. They exemplify what can be achieved through innovation, technology, collaboration and commitment to make an extraordinary contribution to society,” Professor Nirmalathas said.
Associate Professor Barca said he is “deeply honoured” to receive such prestigious recognition, named after Paul Dirac, whose groundbreaking work laid essential foundations for modern quantum theory.
“My heartfelt thanks to WATOC, the University of Melbourne, my incredible teams at Melbourne and ANU, the QDX Technologies team, our collaborators and all those who believed in the value of our work. This achievement represents years of dedication, teamwork and commitment to advancing quantum chemical computational science.”