Breaking the move into smaller, discrete segments allows the system to gradually relax and respond to the perturbation, thereby facilitating more frequent acceptance of larger positional perturbations. Particularly, nonequi- librium relaxation in NCMC mitigates steric clashes and other difficulties which would result in rejection of proposals in traditional MC, allowing for more ambitious move proposals. This is not the first study to apply NCMC to sidechain sampling; another recent study applied it with some success but limited overall benefit, using a different protocol than that employed here. Particularly, in the prior study, the nonequilibrium switching protocol only addressed the sampling of structural degrees of freedom without perturbing interactions within the system, 14 meaning that rotation of sidechains across energy barriers involved applying a force to rotate the sidechain across any torsional barrier and past any steric obstacles. In contrast, we apply NCMC to sidechain rotations where we perturb thermodynamic properties -particularly, the strength of the interactions between the sidechain and the rest of the system -removing steric barriers to rotation (though still retaining any inherent torsional barriers).