Prof. Dr. Matthias Rarey heads the Institute for Computational Molecular Design at the recently founded Centre for Bioinformatics at the University of Hamburg, Germany. His background is in Computer Science (M.Sc. Paderborn, 1992, Ph.D. Bonn, 1996) with a focus on bio- and cheminformatics. Until July 2002, he was group leader of Cheminformatics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI, formerly part of the GMD). His major research interests are the development of new algorithms for problems occuring in molecular design. In 1997 and 2000, Dr. Rarey performed research at the cheminformatics departments of SmithKline Beecham (King of Prussia, PA) and Roche Bioscience (Palo Alto, CA). Over the last eight years he developed the molecular docking software package FlexX which belongs to the most widely used codes for virtual screening. He has also been centrally involved in several other well-known innovative software tools for structure-based as well as ligand-based molecular design that were developed at SCAI.