Continuum Solvation Models: What Else Can We Learn from Them?

Molecular modeling is nowadays a well-established analytical tool exactly as spectroscopies or other experimental methodologies, and we expect that its impact on many research fields in chemistry, biology, material science, and even medicine will enormously increase in the near future. The real spread and success of this expectation will be strictly linked to different factors, among which a fundamental one will be the capacity of simulations of (supra)molecular systems to include environment effects. It is in fact well-known that molecular responses and processes are strongly affected or, in some cases, completely determined by the surrounding environment (either a solvent, a protein, a membrane, a polymer, or a composite matrix). This Perspective highlights recent achievements and suggests possible future developments of one of the most popular approaches to include environmental effects in molecular calculations, the continuun solvation model.