Southwest Research Institute

Southwest Research Institute is a science and technology based research and development organization. The company was founded by Thomas Baker Slick Jr in 1947 in San Antonio, Texas, United States.

The company has interests in creating transfer technology in engineering and physical sciences. The company works with independent, government, premier services, and industry clients, which allows them to assemble teams to tackle various problems.

COVID-19

In response to the outbreak of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) disease, Southwest Research Institute has provided virtual screening software for research on the virus. The company has evaluated two million drug compounds with the goal of identifying high-probability drugs that could be effective against the coronavirus, and cause minimal side effects.

The company's partnership with Texas Biomedical Research Institute has furthered their research for drug development candidates. Their Rhodium software can scan 250,000 drug compounds a day through graphical processing and machine learning techniques. The company used a 3D model of the coronavirus to evaluate potential drugs from a library of compounds. The system predicts how the protein structures in infectious diseases will bind with compounds, and then interpret the results for data analysis.