Atom-centered potentials to describe dispersion forces in density functional theory

London dispersion forces are of primordial importance in chemical and biological systems. The Kohn-Sham formalism of density functional theory combined with many popular approximated exchange-correlation functionals either provides sporadic results or fails completely to account for these forces. Dispersion-corrected atom-centered potentials mimic the effect of these forces via atomic orbital-dependent nonlocal potentials whose parameters are obtained by calibrating against references of chosen accuracy. This scheme has shown encouraging outcomes despite its empiricism; the aim of this communication is to give a brief review on the development and applications to date of this promising approach.