Expertise

Areas of Speciality:

  • Structure based drug discovery for cancer and immunology
  • Computational structural biology and chemistry
  • Protein photonics for imaging

Our lab studies the atomic structure of proteins and ligands using computational and experimental approaches. Our primary tools are computational chemistry, machine learning, and X-ray crystallography. We apply our knowledge of structure to help design drugs, deepen understanding of protein structure and function, and address fundamental questions of protein engineering. We focus on drugs for cancer, malaria, and COVID-19.

Research:

  1. Structure based pharmacology for cancer and immunology
  2. Hydrogen atoms in protein structure and function
  3. Applications of machine learning/artificial intelligence to chemistry and drug design
  4. Mechanisms of photoactive proteins
  5. Open Source Malaria

Keywords: crystallography, structural biology, drug discovery, computational chemistry, machine learning

Research in 1) structure and computational drug design, 2) biophotonics.


Research: Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics – Discovers new anti-cancer drugs through structure-based drug design

Past Affiliations

Johnson Cancer Research Center, College of Arts and Sciences, Kansas State University

Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, College of Arts and Sciences, Kansas State University

Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, College of Natural Sciences, Colleges of Arts & Sciences, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, University of Hawaii (past)

Senior Scientist, ConfometRx (past)

Associate Specialist, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Division of Biological Sciences, College of Letters and Science, University of California, Berkeley (past)

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Division of Biological Sciences, College of Letters and Science, University of California, Berkeley (past)

Communities
Biochemistry, Biophysics, Cellular Biochemistry, Molecular Biochemistry, Physics
Degrees
PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, Molecular Biology, 2001
BA, Harvard University, Biochemical Sciences, 1994
Keywords
drug design biochemistry & molecular biology structural biology protein structure computational chemistry artificial intelligence or cybernetics computer simulation or modeling machine learning crystallography diffraction
Languages
English
Honors

NSF CAREER Award, NSF

Associations
American Crystallographic Association, American Chemical Society, Protein Society, AAAS